Explanation:
A favorite target for astronomers, big, beautiful spiral galaxy
NGC 7331
is one of the brighter
galaxies not
found in Charles Messier's famous
18th century catalog.
About 50 million light-years distant in the northern constellation
Pegasus and
similar in size to our own Milky Way Galaxy,
NGC 7331 is often imaged as the foreground of a
visual grouping
that includes an intriguing assortment of background
galaxies some ten times farther away.
This striking image of the well-studied
island universe and environs
was produced using data from the
Calar
Alto Observatory in southern Spain.
Perhaps
the
deepest view of the region yet, the image data were processed
to reveal sharp details of all sizes in both bright and faint areas.
A color balance was chosen so that white would be the
result of averaging colors over the entire galaxy.
The result shows off a wealth of remarkable features in NGC 7331
and its surroundings.
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