Explanation:
Two stars within our own Milky Way galaxy anchor the foreground
of this cosmic snapshot.
Beyond them lie the galaxies of
the
Hydra Cluster.
In fact, while the spiky foreground stars are hundreds of light-years
distant, the Hydra Cluster galaxies are over 100 million light-years
away.
Three large galaxies near the cluster center, two yellow
ellipticals
(NGC 3311, NGC 3309) and one prominent blue spiral (NGC 3312),
are the dominant galaxies, each about 150,000 light-years in diameter.
An intriguing overlapping galaxy pair cataloged as
NGC 3314 is just
above and left of NGC 3312.
Also known as Abell 1060, the Hydra galaxy cluster is one of three large
galaxy clusters within 200 million light-years of the Milky Way.
In the
nearby universe,
galaxies are gravitationally bound into clusters which themselves are
loosely bound
into superclusters
that in turn are seen to align over even larger
scales.
At a distance of 100 million light-years
this picture would be about 1.3 million light-years
across.
