Astronomy Picture of the Day

Good Hump Day morning RP. Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is titled "M95: Spiral Galaxy with an Inner Ring." Messier 95 (M95) is one of the closer examples of a big and beautiful barred spiral galaxy. Visible with larger instruments are the spiral arms delineated by open clusters of bright blue stars, lanes of dark dust, the diffuse glow of billions of faint stars, a circumnuclear ring about the galaxy center, and a short bar across the galaxy center. M95 spans about 50,000 light-years, lies about 30 million light years away, and can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation Leo (between Cancer and Virgo).