Explanation:
Like
grains of sand on a cosmic beach,
individual stars of large
spiral galaxy NGC 300
are resolved
in this sharp image from the Hubble Space Telescope's
Advanced Camera for Surveys
(ACS).
The inner region of the galaxy
is pictured, spanning about 7,500
light-years.
At its center is the bright, densely packed galactic core surrounded by
a loose array of dark dust lanes mixed with the stars in
the galactic plane.
NGC 300 lies 6.5 million light-years away and
is part of a
group
of galaxies named for the southern constellation Sculptor.
Hubble's unique ability to distinguish
so many stars in
NGC 300
can be used to hone techniques
for making distance measurements
on extragalactic scales.
