Sometimes NASA gets it right, of course. Despite the foofooraw about political censorship inside of NASA, very fine work gets done by the agency.
For example, that picture is from Hubble, launched by NASA in 1990 (click it for a bigger version, or here for a ginormous version). The galaxy is NGC 1309, a gorgeous face-on spiral roughly 100 million light years away. Oddly enough, astronomers consider that nearby.
That’s important, actually. There’s some real science behind this pretty face! About three years ago, the light from an exploding star in that galaxy reached our telescopes here on Earth. It was designated SN2002fk, meaning it’s a supernova, it blew up in 2002, and it was the 162nd one to be seen that year — they are labeled alphabetically, so the first was 2002a, the second 2002b, the 27th 2002aa, etc. But more than that, it’s a special type of supernova… ...
