papodidi
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2014 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar
5
Hoag's Object, a galaxy made up of a nearly perfect ring of hot, blue stars rotating around a yellow nucleus. The entire galaxy is about 120,000 light-years wide, which is slightly larger than our Milky Way Galaxy. What appears to be a gap separating the two stellar populations may actually contain some star clusters that are almost too faint to see. Curiously, an object that bears an uncanny resemblance to Hoag's Object can be seen in the gap at the one o'clock position. The object is probably a distant ring galaxy. The blue ring of stars may be the shredded remains of a galaxy that passed nearby about 2 to 3 billion years ago. Hoag's Object is 600 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens. (NASA, STScI/AURA)5
