🌌 Galaxy
Whirlpool Galaxy
A beautiful spiral tugging on a smaller galaxy.
- Distance
- 31 million light-years away
- Size
- 76,000 light-years across
Did you know?
- Its long arms are being stretched by the pull of its small companion galaxy.
Compare Whirlpool Galaxy with the Milky WaySide by side, to scale, in the app
More NASA photos of Whirlpool GalaxyStraight from NASA’s image library, in the app
Explore more
All of deep space
The Sun
Our star, an ordinary one that keeps everything here alive.
Betelgeuse
A red supergiant in Orion that will one day explode.
Alpha Centauri
The closest star system to the Sun.
Eta Carinae
A pair of giant stars, one of them about 90 times heavier than the Sun.
Mira
A red giant star racing through space with a tail like a comet.
Zeta Ophiuchi
A runaway star, flung out when its partner exploded.