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More than a spiral

Bob Fera/Steve Mandel, taken from ObsTech El Sauce Observatory, Chile

NGC 1512 is a barred spiral galaxy with a unique double ring roughly 33 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Horologium. Ultraviolet space telescope views reveal the full extent of the spiral arms, and how distorted they are by the galaxy’s gravitational tango with NGC 1510, at right. The imagers took 17¾ hours of exposure for this LRGB image with a 17-inch scope.