83 A tricolour CCD image of Messier 83, an almost face-on spiral galaxy. This large nebula is easily seen in most amateur sized telescopes, and has a very high sufrace brightness. The large Spiral Galaxy M33 is only seen with the naked eye from very dark locations well away from sources of Light Pollution like towns and cities. This spiral galaxy is one of the brightest we can see, and shows as a narrow spindle of light in binoculars.
Large telescopes reveal a wealth of detail.
At the end of its life a star similar to the Sun will shed its outer atmosphere and the hot white dwarf remaining will then cause the previously expelled material to glow, in a similar manner to a flourescent light tube. These objects are known as Planetary Nebulae , due to their resemblance to planets in the lower quality instruments astronomers used in previous centuries. This unusual galaxy is quite bright and is easily seen in binoculars from a dark site, as a small fuzzy patch not far from the bright globular star cluster Omega Centauri. Also going under the name Centaurus A this galaxy is a powerful source of radio waves. This galaxy is tipped about 45 degrees from our line of sight, changing its overall shape to an ellipse.