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A Spiral Disguised
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Name: NGC 1032
Description: Spiral Galaxy
Position (J2000): RA 02h 39m 23.6s Dec +01° 05' 38?
Constellation: Cetus
Visual magnitude: 11.6
Angular dimensions: 3.3 × 1.1 arcmin
Distance: 100 million light years
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Release date: May 14, 2018
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ABOUT THIS IMAGE:

Resembling a wizard's staff set aglow, NGC 1032 cleaves the quiet darkness of space in two in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

NGC 1032 is located about a hundred million light years away in the constellation Cetus (The Sea Monster). Although beautiful, this image perhaps does not do justice to the galaxy's true aesthetic appeal: NGC 1032 is actually a spectacular spiral galaxy, but from Earth, the galaxy's vast disc of gas, dust and stars is seen nearly edge-on.

A handful of other galaxies can be seen lurking in the background, scattered around the narrow stripe of NGC 1032. Many are oriented face-on or at tilted angles, showing off their glamorous spiral arms and bright cores. Such orientations provide a wealth of detail about the arms and their nuclei, but fully understanding a galaxy's three-dimensional structure also requires an edge-on view. This gives astronomers an overall idea of how stars are distributed throughout the galaxy and allows them to measure the "height" of the disc and the bright star-studded core.

NGC 1032 was discovered by William Herschel on December 18, 1783