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                           Astronomy Picture of the Day   
      
       Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our   
         fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation   
                       written by a professional astronomer.   
      
                                    2024 May 2   
      
                        M100: A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy   
                       Image Credit & Copyright: Drew Evans   
      
      Explanation: Majestic on a truly cosmic scale, M100 is appropriately   
      known as a grand design spiral galaxy. The large galaxy of over 100   
      billion stars has well-defined spiral arms, similar to our own Milky   
      Way. One of the brightest members of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies,   
      M100, also known as NGC 4321 is 56 million light-years distant toward   
      the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. In this telescopic   
      image, the face-on grand design spiral shares a nearly 1 degree wide   
      field-of-view with slightly less conspicuous edge-on spiral NGC 4312   
      (at upper right). The 21 hour long equivalent exposure from a dark sky   
      site near Flagstaff, Arizona, planet Earth, reveals M100's bright blue   
      star clusters and intricate winding dust lanes which are hallmarks of   
      this class of galaxies. Measurements of variable stars in M100 have   
      played an important role in determining the size and age of the   
      Universe.   
      
                       Tomorrow's picture: cloudy exoplanet   
        __________________________________________________________________   
      
          Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)   
               NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.   
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                         A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,   
                              NASA Science Activation   
                                & Michigan Tech. U.   
      
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