This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the galaxy NGC-5866. The shot was taken using its Advanced Camera for Surveys. What's cool about the shot is the knife-edge profile of the galaxy. It sits almost perfectly horizontal to our line-of-sight. From this perspective you can see the sharp dust lane that bisects the galaxy, the hot, young blue star clusters that traverse along that dust lane, the bright galactic centre with its slightly reddish halo, and the wispy outer halo that thins as you look out and away from the galaxy. As well, you can see several background galaxies, some of them billions of light-years distant. NGC-5866 lies about 44 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Draco.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA/W.Keel, U.Alabama

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