APOD: 2020 January 25 - Rubin s Galaxy

Good morning, Rallypoint. Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is titled "Rubin's Galaxy." Located 232 million light-years away in the northern constellation Perseus, UGC 2885 is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains 10 times as many stars. A number of foreground stars in our Milky Way can be seen in the image, identified by their diffraction spikes (the brightest star is to the left of the galaxy center). UGC 2885 has been nicknamed "Rubin's galaxy," after astronomer Vera Rubin (1928 – 2016), who studied the galaxy's rotation rate in search of dark matter. Her work was the first to demonstrate the presence of dark matter in the Universe.