Big, Beautiful and Blue: Hubble Captures Immense Galaxy That Stretches 200,000 Light-Years Across

Galaxy NGC 2336

Galaxy NGC 2336 — a barred spiral galaxy that stretches an immense 200,000 light-years across — is captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, V. Antoniou, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

NGC 2336 is the quintessential galaxy — big, beautiful, and blue — and it is captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The barred spiral galaxy stretches an immense 200,000 light-years across and is located approximately 100 million light-years away in the northern constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).

Its spiral arms are glittered with young stars, visible in their bright blue light. In contrast, the redder central part of the galaxy is dominated by older stars.

NGC 2336 was discovered in 1876 by German astronomer Wilhelm Tempel, using a 28-centimeter telescope. This Hubble image is so much better than the view Tempel would have had — Hubble’s main mirror is 2.4 meters across, nearly ten times the size of the telescope Tempel used. In 1987, NGC 2336 experienced a Type-Ia supernova, the only observed supernova in the galaxy since its discovery 111 years earlier.

15 Comments on "Big, Beautiful and Blue: Hubble Captures Immense Galaxy That Stretches 200,000 Light-Years Across"

  1. Rebecca Gutierrez | March 1, 2021 at 1:29 pm | Reply

    Gorgeous you never know what God will give up. Thank you

  2. Milky Way is around 53,000 LY across

  3. That is not correct. The estimated radius of visible disk is about 53,000 ly making the diameter about 106,000 ly for the milky way.

  4. Justin J Grobner | March 1, 2021 at 10:34 pm | Reply

    So they can take a picture of something that measures 200,000 light years and is 100,000,000 light years(5 trillion 875 billion x 20 miles according to google) away from earth but not one of something that measures 7917.5 miles from the same camera of the earth we live on and are confined to. bahahahah bahaha bahahaha Lol

    • Hubble COULD take a picture of earth if it was in a geosynchronous orbit. Since it isn’t, a point on the equator is moving about 4.4 miles/sec relative to Hubble, and the photo would be very blurry.

    • Jaysen V Rodriguez | March 8, 2021 at 8:20 am | Reply

      Let me put this very simple for you. How can you take a picture of your house been inside of your house? You need to get outside of your house to be able to take a picture of it but still you can take pictures of other houses from your own house. That would mean we have to travel many thousands of light years outside of the Galaxy to be able to take a picture of our own Galaxy, not a easy task. I guess laughing at our own ignorance is good thing bahahahah bahaha bahahaha Lol.

  5. Babu G. Ranganathan | March 2, 2021 at 6:09 am | Reply

    Babu G. Ranganathan*
    (B.A. Bible/Biology)

    JUST BECAUSE SCIENCE CAN EXPLAIN how an airplane works doesn’t mean that no one designed or made the airplane. And just because science can explain how life or the universe works doesn’t mean there was no Designer and Maker behind them.

    Natural laws may explain how the order in the universe works and operates, but mere undirected natural laws cannot explain the origin of that order. Once you have a complete and living cell then the genetic code and biological machinery exist to direct the formation of more cells from raw materials such as amino acids and other chemicals, but how could life or the cell have naturally originated when no directing code and mechanisms existed in nature? Read my Internet article: HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM.

    WHAT IS SCIENCE? Science simply is knowledge based on observation. No human observed the universe coming by chance or by design, by creation or by evolution. These are positions of faith. The issue is which faith the scientific evidence best supports.

    SCIENCE SHOWS THAT THE UNIVERSE CANNOT BE ETERNAL because it could not have sustained itself eternally due to the law of entropy (increasing and irreversible net energy decay, even in an open system). Even a hypothetical oscillating universe could not continue to oscillate eternally! Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity shows that space, matter, and time all are physical and all had a beginning. Space even produces particles because it’s actually something, not nothing. What about the Higgs boson (the so-called “God Particle”)? The Higgs boson, even if it existed, would not have created mass from nothing, but rather it would have converted energy into mass. Einstein showed that all matter is some form of energy. Even time had a beginning! Time is not eternal.

    The law of entropy doesn’t allow the universe to be eternal. If the universe were eternal, everything, including time (which modern science has shown is as physical as mass and space), would have become totally entropied by now and the entire universe would have ended in a uniform heat death a long, long time ago. The fact that this hasn’t happened already is powerful evidence for a beginning to the universe.

    Popular atheistic scientist Stephen Hawking admits that the universe had a beginning and came from nothing but he believes that nothing became something by a natural process yet to be discovered. That’s not rational thinking at all, and it also would be making the effect greater than its cause to say that nothing created something. The beginning had to be of supernatural origin because science teaches us from the First Law of Thermodynamics that natural laws and processes do not have the ability to bring something into existence from nothing.

    The supernatural origin of the universe cannot be proved by science but science points to a supernatural intelligence and power for the origin and order of the universe. Where did God come from? Obviously, unlike the universe, God’s nature doesn’t require a beginning.

    The disorder in the universe can be explained because of chance and random processes, but the order can be explained only because of intelligence and design.

    Gravity may explain how the order found in the precise and orderly courses of thousands of billions of stars is maintained, but gravity cannot explain the origin of that order.

    Some evolutionary astronomers believe that trillions of stars crashed into each other leaving surviving stars to find precise orderly orbits in space. Not only is this irrational, but if there was such a mass collision of stars then there would be a super mass residue of gas clouds in space to support this hypothesis. The present level of residue of gas clouds in space doesn’t support the magnitude of star deaths required for such a hypothesis. And, as already stated, the origin of stars cannot be explained by the Big Bang because of the reasons mentioned above. It’s one thing to say that stars may decay and die into random gas clouds, but it is totally different to say that gas clouds form into stars.

    Even the father of Chaos theory admitted that the “mechanisms” existing in the non-living world allow for only very rudimentary levels of order to arise spontaneously (by chance), but not the kind or level of order we find in the structures of DNA, RNA, and proteins. Yes, individual amino acids have been shown to come into existence by chance but not protein molecules which require that the various amino acids be in a precise sequence just like the letters found in a sentence.

    Some things don’t need experiment or scientific proof. In law there is a dictum called prima facie evidence. It means “evidence that speaks for itself.”

    An example of a true prima facie would be if you discovered an elaborate sand castle on the beach. You don’t have to experiment to know that it came by design and not by the chance forces of wind and water.

    If you discovered a romantic letter or message written in the sand, you don’t have to experiment to know that it was by design and not because a stick randomly carried by wind put it there. You naturally assume that an intelligent and rational being was responsible.

    It’s interesting that Carl Sagan would have acknowledged sequential radio signals in space as evidence of intelligent life sending them, but he wouldn’t acknowledge the sequential structure of molecules in DNA (the genetic code) as evidence of an intelligent Cause. Read my popular Internet article, HOW DID MY DNA MAKE ME.

    I encourage all to read my popular Internet articles:

    NATURAL LIMITS TO EVOLUTION
    HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM

    Visit my latest Internet site: THE SCIENCE SUPPORTING CREATION (This site answers many arguments, both old and new, that have been used by evolutionists to support their theory)

    Author of popular Internet article, TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF HELL EVOLVED FROM GREEK ROOTS

    *I have given successful lectures (with question and answer period afterwards) defending creation before evolutionist science faculty and students at various colleges and universities. I’ve been privileged to be recognized in the 24th edition of Marquis “Who’s Who in The East” for my writings on religion and science.

    • Jaysen V Rodriguez | March 8, 2021 at 7:56 am | Reply

      So you said that something can’t come up from nothing but then you said that your god came up from nothing. That doesn’t make sense. Like it or not at some point either your fictional god, the Universe or something else came out of nothing. Magic mythology is not a serious answer.

    • You have fed your mind a world of nonsense and are selling it for your own greed to those who will buy the same fake dreams. If magic people were real, and alive, why are they not present and only in your head?
      It is good that you will be extinct soon. Someday the real religion of accumulated science knowledge will be funded as much as your accumulated knowledge for fake prayers. Science is required for existence. Why haven’t you considered the horror of someone like you continuing on forever, or me, or your stupid ideas of existence? If everlasting were real, the universe would be filled with your human perverse superstitious perspectives, or those like me that would hunt you down forever to teach you about change, or self-reliance, over and over and over!
      I could go on about my education and my sniper missions, but you wouldn’t listen. Feed yourself science instead of feeling(s).
      Finally, (you have become unreachable, because you do not think about real things), but consider this as your last educational moment from someone who knows… truth is,
      “You become what you think about.”
      A’della

  6. Not sure what the big fuss is about existance of God is? God may be just a “god” as we humans desire an explanation for “the beginning”. Or God may indeed be a “God”. It doesn’t really matter.
    What matters is we use observation and data to seek the closest explaination for the natural world. The issues we run into with “God” is which tribe you belong to in defining your God. Humans have had many intrepretations of God. Some are adament God takes the form of thr Jewish/ Christian version. A personal all knowing god that a human has a personal relationship with. Others are less connected to the personal relationship aspect of “a Creator”. So regardless of what you propose in the belief of a God or not a God the trouble begins when you start to assign qualities to God. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit version is a human construct. Not an absolute truth. We assign to the concept of God what we want or hope it to be.
    It is obvious to me that God is not perfect. Whether it is by design or not is irrelevent. We see this because everything around us changes by random actiobs. Mutations of DNA lead to different versions of the organism and over time the better version wins out. Whether its COVID viral mutations, variations of cells leading to different species or stars unstable and achieving Super Nova ststus the pattern is the same. Imperfections of the present drives future changes.

    Flip a coin on you ultimate believe of “the Beginning”. The real issues is the ersion of God you have in the present. And I suspect it is your present view of God that drives your desire to seek the beginning of our Univese. It is a way to justify your current view of God.
    Does your view of God provide tolerance to other views of God or is your view the “right” view? If you are adament your view us the “right” view then I propose you have bias to your view and aren’t in a position to accept other intrepretations of God and the observations of the Universe.

    • Why is the desire to have proof of the influence of a God so pervasive? I am emboldened by the idea of a universe that assembled itself through trial and error over billions of years. Creation by a God is less inspiring I think. Struggle and perserverence are more amazing than the snap of a Gods fingers.

  7. Bìbhùþibhùsan Paþèl | March 3, 2021 at 12:24 am | Reply

    ÑGC2336 Galaxy same in sìze,shape tò òur Milkyway còntaìns Type-1a supernova ìs boon for stùdý and mèasurement of the galaxìès ìn the Universe.

  8. Bìbhùþibhùsan Paþèl | March 3, 2021 at 12:37 am | Reply

    ÑGC2336 Galaxy same in sìze,shape tò òur Milkyway còntaìns Type-1a supernova ìs boon for stùdý and mèasurement of the galaxìès ìn the Universe.Type-1à supeŕnòva èmìts fìxed ŕate of light at any position in space helps to mèasùre expansiòn of ùniveŕse.

  9. Ya, what that other dude said about the thingy, I think was what he said and topics are real, George Washington. Okay bye !?Emcee Sterxastghilts. Okay bye now

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