IC 342: A Milky Way TwinThis elegant face-on spiral galaxy, IC 342, is very similar to our own Milky Way galaxy in shape and size, but lies 14 million light years away.It lies in a direction that is littered with objects that lie within our own Milky Way, though. Nearly all of the stars in this image are within our galaxy, a thousand times closer than the more diffuse light from IC 342. Still, the grace of the spiral arms is easy to trace, especially by looking for the pink clouds representing vast clusters of stars illuminating their surrounding gas. |
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