M83: Star Streams and a Thousand Rubies

M83: Star Streams and a Thousand Rubies
Image Credit & Copyright: Michael Sidonio
Explanation:

Big, bright, and beautiful,
spiral galaxy M83
lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern
tip of the very long
constellation Hydra.

About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is
known as the Southern Pinwheel for its pronounced spiral arms.

But the wealth of
reddish star forming regions
found near the edges of the arms’ thick dust lanes,
also suggest another popular moniker for M83, the
Thousand-Ruby Galaxy.

This new deep telescopic
digital image
also records the bright galaxy’s faint, extended halo.

Arcing toward the bottom of the cosmic frame lies a
stellar tidal stream,
debris drawn from massive M83 by
the gravitational disruption of a smaller, merging satellite galaxy.

Astronomers David Malin and Brian Hadley
found the elusive
star stream in the mid 1990s by enhancing photographic plates.