ESO/VLT ANTU, FORS1
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This galaxy, labeled M83, is said to be similar to our own Milky Way. Its beautiful spiral bands are dotted with bright areas, which correspond to regions of intense star formation. Like any large spiral galaxy, it contains billions of stars in various stages of evolution.

M83 is visible from the Southern Hemisphere and is sometimes called the Southern Pinwheel. It is about 15 million light-years away. Astronomers have noted a half-dozen supernovae, or exploding stars, in M83 over the past 100 years or so, a high rate compared to other similar galaxies.

M83 was discovered in the mid 1700s and was the first to be noted outside what is called the Local Group, a collection of about 30 galaxies near the Milky Way (it is not entirely clear which galaxies definitely belong or whether there might be more). It gained the "M" when Charles Messier later catalogued it. This picture was taken in 1999 by the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. [Predicting Supernovae]

-- Robert Roy Britt

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