Astronomy Picture of the Day: 11/08/13 - UFO Galaxy

This is NGC 2683, also known as the UFO Galaxy. It is located about 35-million light-years from Earth in the constellation Lynx.

The galaxy appears nearly edge-on from our vantage point in the cosmos. Astronomers have traditionally believed it to be an unbarred spiral galaxy but recent studies suggest it might be a barred spiral galaxy instead; our view makes that hard to determine. An advantage of our vantage point is the ability to analyze the light emitted from the galactic center and measure the composition of the UFO’s dust lanes. NGC 2683 is both smaller and dimmer than our own Milky Way, but it contains about twice as many globular clusters as we do.

Sources and further reading can be seen here: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/astronomy-picture-of-the-day-110813-ufo-galaxy/