text: June 08, 201111:00 AM
  The galaxy is pretty nice; a nearly perfectly face-on spiral. I noticed it's a bit lopsided, with one arm poking out a bit. Those clumps along the arm are regions of active star formation, and the dust lanes are clear too. Not bad for a galaxy a mere 2 arcminutes across in size – compare that to the Moon, which is 15 times larger in the sky! In real size, it's not terribly big as galaxies go: about 25,000 light years across, only a quarter of the size of our galaxy.
  In the press release linked above, it says this image was taken "with the help of" Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, who was visiting the Very Large Telescope at the time. I wonder what his involvement was – it's fun to think of the country's leader using a joystick to swoosh and zoom the 'scope. Still, it's very nice indeed to see a major Head of State paying attention to science. Especially when it's astronomy, and involved such a lovely image.