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Gallery: 65 All-Time Great Galaxy Hits

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Spiral Galaxy Spider Web

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Looking like a spider's web swirled into a spiral, the galaxy IC 342 presents its delicate pattern of dust in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Seen in infrared light, the faint starlight gives way to the glowing bright patterns of dust found throughout the galaxy's disk.

NGC 3314

Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA/Processing: Martin Pugh

NGC 3314 is actually two large spiral galaxies

Messier 101

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Messier 101: The Pinwheel Galaxy.

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 2903

Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/Coelum

The central bulge of this spiral galaxy seen almost face-on is composed of old stars giving a yellowish appearance, while the spiral amrs host younger stars denoted by their blue-light emission and star formation regions denoted by their red-light emission.

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Space.com Staff
Space.com Staff

Space.com is the premier source of space exploration, innovation and astronomy news, chronicling (and celebrating) humanity's ongoing expansion across the final frontier. Originally founded in 1999, Space.com is, and always has been, the passion of writers and editors who are space fans and also trained journalists. Our current news team consists of Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik; Editor Hanneke Weitering, Senior Space Writer Mike Wall; Senior Writer Meghan Bartels; Senior Writer Chelsea Gohd, Senior Writer Tereza Pultarova and Staff Writer Alexander Cox, focusing on e-commerce. Senior Producer Steve Spaleta oversees our space videos, with Diana Whitcroft as our Social Media Editor.