Credit: DES/DOE/Fermilab/NCSA & CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURAAcknowledgments: Image processing: DES, Jen Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), Travis Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin

NGC 474 is at a distance of about 100 million light-years in the constellation of Pisces. This image shows unusual structures around NGC 474 characterized as tidal tails and shell-like structures made up of hundreds of millions of stars.  This image is an excerpt from the Dark Energy Survey, which has released a massive, public collection of astronomical data and calibrated images from six years of work. The Dark Energy Survey is a global collaboration that includes the Department of Energy's (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), and NSF NOIRLab. The image was taken with the Dark Energy Camera, fabricated by DOE, on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope. The quality of the survey can be appreciated by diving into this zoomable version showing a background tapestry of thousands of distant galaxies. If you look hard enough you will be able to find dozens of asteroids revealing themselves by their colored trails as they move between the exposures taken through different filters.

Provider: NOIRLab

Image Source: https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noirlab2106c/

Curator: NSF's NOIRLab, Tucson, AZ, USA

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License