Star-Filled Night Sky

As we look into the night sky, we may not know the names of everything we see, but we feel the impact of star-studded beauty.  A person with no roof, or a broken one, has limited (or no) shelter from bad weather - but looking up, one sees the stars.

Click on this NASA image for a much better view.

Credits

Photo by Martin Pugh, online courtesy NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

NASA provides this explanation for the image:

NGC 2442: Galaxy in Volans 

Distorted galaxy NGC 2442 can be found in the southern constellation of the flying fish, (Piscis) Volans. Located about 50 million light-years away, the galaxy's two spiral arms extending from a pronounced central bar give it a hook-shaped appearance. This deep color image also shows the arms' obscuring dust lanes, young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions surrounding a core of yellowish light from an older population of stars. But the star forming regions seem more concentrated along the drawn-out (right side) spiral arm. The distorted structure is likely the result of an ancient close encounter with the smaller galaxy seen near the top left of this field of view. The two interacting galaxies are separated by about 150,000 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 2442.