Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar . Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, pictured above , was captured in spectacular detail in this recently released image taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope . Visible are dark filamentary dust lanes , young clusters of bright blue stars, red emission nebulas of glowing hydrogen gas, a long bright bar of stars across the center, and a bright active nucleus that likely houses a supermassive black hole . Light takes about 55 million years to reach us from NGC 1073 , which spans about 80,000 light years across. NGC 1073 can be seen with a moderately-sized telescope toward the constellation of the Sea Monster ( Cetus ), Fortuitously, the above image not only caught the X-ray bright star system IXO 5, visible on the upper left and likely internal to the barred spiral, but three quasars far in the distance.
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Image Credit: NASA , ESA , Hubble Space Telescope