Pic of the Week: Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 5335

This week’s image looks like something ginned up by AI, but it is from the Hubble Space Telescope. Just the number of stray galaxies in the image is amazing.

Here is the description of the image from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble page:

Barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335 observed by the Hubble Space Telescope takes up the majority of the view. At its center is a milky yellow, flattened oval that extends bottom left to top. Within the oval is a bright central region that looks circular, with the very center the brightest. In the bright central region is what looks like a bar, extending from top left to bottom right. Around this is a thick swath of blue stars speckled with white regions. Multiple arms wrap up and around in a counterclockwise direction, becoming fainter the farther out they are. Both the white core and the spiral arms are intertwined with dark streaks of dust. The background of space is black. Thousands of distant galaxies in an array of colors are speckled throughout.