Fact Sheet
NGC 253
At a distance of 7.5 million light-years, the large spiral galaxy NGC 253 is only a few times more distant than the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way. Hubble's camera was able to capture only a fraction of the galaxy when this image was taken in May 1994. Astronomers study NGC 253's "super star clusters" -- hundreds of massive stars packed into regions only a few light-years across.
|