Behold the coiled beauty of this snake-like galaxy 80 million light-years from Earth
A spiral galaxy is curled up like a sleeping serpent in a striking new image from the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).
Swirling silently 80 million light-years from Earth like a sleeping, coiled snake, NGC 1087 is an intermediate spiral galaxy that spans 86,800 light-years in the constellation Cetus. This area of the sky is named after a sea monster from Greek mythology and is home to other water-themed constellations, like Aquarius and Pisces.
Seen as a composite image composed of shots taken at different wavelengths, ALMA's observations capture the galaxy's lava-like reddish hue, which represents cold clouds of star-spawning molecular gas.
The blue-tinted regions indicate areas of older, more mature stars, all imaged by the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer on ESO's Very Large Telescope, located at the expansive ALMA observatory site.
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