This beautiful spiral galaxy, also known as M106, lies about 22 million light-years from Earth within the constellation Canes Venatici. The swirling arms of this galaxy span tens of thousands of light-years and are made up of billions of stars, dust clouds, and nebulae. M106 is a galaxy alive with activity, and its central region emits bright radio waves and X-rays, giving us clues about the powerful forces shaping it.Other galaxies are visible in this picture.
NGC 4248, a small, irregular galaxy and a companion to M106, is about 24 million light-years distant. PGC2299122 and PGC2299019 are estimated to be 3.8 Billion light years away:
NGC 4217, a spiral galaxy located about 60 million light-years away:
NGC 4220, a lenticular galaxy about 64 million light-years away:
Just above the center of the image lies NGC 4231 and NGC 4232—a pair of merging galaxies. These spectacular galaxies are located over 350 million light-years away and reflect what our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will experience in a few billion years:
While these galaxies are awe-inspiring, in the grand scheme of the universe, they are still relatively close by. Far beyond these galaxies, at an almost unimaginable distance, are more quasars. One particular quasar, SDSS J121617.68+465509.9, with a redshift of 3.776 and an apparent magnitude of 21.30, is so far away that its light has taken over 12 billion years to reach us:
When the photons you captured left this quasar, Earth did not yet exist. Stars were still forming from clouds of gas, and the universe was a much younger, more turbulent place.
This quasar is a beacon from the distant universe, a reminder of a time when the cosmos was still young—when galaxies were forming and black holes were growing rapidly at their centers.
As we look out into the night sky, we are looking back in time, seeing the universe as it was, not as it is.
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