If you think that this spiral galaxy — NGC 4921 to its friends — looks a little sick, then you’re not far off the mark. Nicknamed the Anaemic Spiral, it’s not quite as perky as most other galaxies in the Universe.
Its shimmering white haze is dubbed anaemic because the galaxy has a lower rate of star formation and surface brightness compared to others. That does, however, make it easy to spot the main features which lie within and around it, as NASA explains:
Visible in the above image are, from the centre, a bright nucleus, a bright central bar, a prominent ring of dark dust, blue clusters of recently formed stars, several smaller companion galaxies, unrelated galaxies in the far distant universe, and unrelated stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.
This image was acquired by Hubble Space Telescope, as part of a project to identify stellar distance markers known as Cepheid variable stars. [NASA]
Picture: NASA