Astronomy Tuesday

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

This galaxy is Messier 77, as it appeared forty-seven years ago, when the light that recently found its way to a lens on the Hubble first left home. It's about 100 light years across, slightly larger than our galaxy.

There is a supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy; in the visible spectrum, which is what this photo shows, it's just your run of the mill spiral galaxy. But if you had x-ray vision, you'd see an enormous brightness at the core from the black hole slurping up all those delicious stars.