ESO’s look at NGC 1187

I like this ESO image of NGC 1187. It’s a stunning image especially when you see the larger versions (click the image above or better yet the link below).
NGC 1187 is located around 60 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. Not to stray too far afield from the galaxy, but Eridanus (the river) is home to a lot of interesting things a couple of which include a couple of binary star systems you can discern with a small telescope, namely 32 Eridani, a 4.8 magnitude yellow colored star and a bluish (they say blue-green but I can’t tell) star of 6.1 magnitude and 39 Eridani, a 4.9 magnitude “orangish” giant star and a rather dim “by comparison” partner at a mag 8. Both systems are in the order of 200 to 300 light-year from us, not that far cosmic-wise.
Here’s the ESO press release that will give you very good description of the features in the image:
The galaxy NGC 1187 [1] is seen almost face-on, which gives us a good view of its spiral structure. About half a dozen prominent spiral arms can be seen, each containing large amounts of gas and dust. The bluish features in ...