Close-up of the Milky Way's twin brothers

Astronomers have just published a picture claimed to be the most beautiful ever about NGC 6744, a spiral galaxy described as the "twin brother" of our Milky Way.

According to the BBC news agency, the impressive picture of the galaxy NGC 6744 is 2.2 meters long by the MPG / ESO telescope located in Chile by the European Southern Observatory.

NGC Galaxy 6744 (Photo: i.usatoday.net )

NGC 6744 is about 30 million light-years from our Milky Way galaxy, in the constellation Pavo. Although it is nearly twice the size of the Milky Way, it has many similarities, such as the clear spiral arms and the central region.

Helical arms are places where many star-forming regions are located. Bright light from hydrogen in these active areas is indicated by red in the image.

The image also shows that NGC 6744 has a smaller companion galaxy (below the right corner of the image), similar to the Milky Way's neighbors: the Magellanic clouds. Servers that store multiple weapons of star-forming regions, the light coming from hydrogen gas in these regions are shown as red in the image.