About This Image

This picture started life as a photo of spiral galaxy NGC 4414. There are plenty of photos of spiral galaxies but I had some specific criteria I wanted. First, it had to be similar to what we think the Milky Way looks like. Second, I wanted a view almost directly above the galactic pole. Next, it had to be close enough to our own galaxy to display a lot of detail. Finally, I didn't want a photo with a lot of local stars visible. With all these restrictions it became a real challenge to find a suitable picture.

The photo of NGC 4414 fit all of my criteria. The problem was that it rotates counterclockwise from our point of view from Earth. The Milky Way rotates clockwise when looking at it from above the north galactic pole -- the direction I wanted for my sequence. I also needed to have the center of the galaxy in the upper left corner of the image to fit into the sequence properly. So I got creative with my copy of PaintShopPro. I flipped the picture right to left, then rotated the image until the core was in the proper position. Finally I cropped it so that the Sun's position within the galaxy was where I wanted it.

The original photo was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of the HST Key Project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale. NGC 4414 is about 60 million light years away -- 30 times the distance to our nearest neighbor Andromeda.

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