10 Of The Most Mesmerizing Galaxies Captured On Telescope

Oscar Wilde once said: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." I guess I would be that person who's always searching for the beauty in life no matter the circumstances. And what would be more fascinated and more magical than a night sky full of stars?

The Hubble Space Telescope launched into low Earth orbit in the 1990s unveiled vast cosmic islands in the endless wild ocean of the universe, and here are some of the most beautiful ones.

10 PHOTOS

#1 Sombrero Galaxy

The Sombrero galaxy is a peculiar galaxy of unclear classification in the constellation borders of Virgo and Corvus and located around 28 million light-years away from Earth.

#2 Hoag’s Object

Hoag's Object is an unusual ring galaxy in the constellation of Serpens Caput. It is identified as either a planetary nebula or a peculiar galaxy. The galaxy has approximately eight billion stars and is roughly 120,000 light-years across.

#3 W2246-0526

W2246-0526 is the most luminous galaxy ever discovered that is cannibalizing not one, not two, but at least three smaller galaxies, which could explain its extreme brightness.

Most galaxies are between 10 billion and 13.6 billion years old and some are almost as old as the universe itself, which formed around 13.8 billion years ago. Some of the oldest galaxies observed formed when the universe was only about a billion years old. Scientists think those galaxies started to grow around pockets of space that were slightly denser than their surroundings, an effect created by cosmic inflation when the universe began.

Galaxies consist of stars, planets, and vast clouds of gas and dust, all held together by gravity. The largest one contains trillions of stars and could be more than a million light-years across. The smallest may contain a few thousand stars and span just a few hundred light-years. Most large galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, some with billions of times the Sun’s mass.

#4 Galaxy NGC 4388

NGC 4388 is an active spiral galaxy in the equatorial constellation of Virgo and located at a distance of 57 million light-years from Earth.

#5 Galaxy NGC 4696

NGC 4696 is an elliptical galaxy located in the constellation Centaurus. It has a supermassive black hole that beats like a heart every 5 to 10 million years.

#6 Whirlpool Galaxy

The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a (M51a) or NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy.

Before the 20th century, people didn't know other galaxies than the Milky Way; earlier astronomers had classified them as “nebulae,” since they looked like fuzzy clouds.

It all changed in the 1920s when the astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that the Andromeda “nebula” was a galaxy in its own right. Despite the immense distance, Andromeda is the closest large galaxy to our Milky Way, and it's bright enough in the night sky that it's visible to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere.

#7 The Black Eye Galaxy

The Black Eye Galaxy is a relatively isolated spiral galaxy 17 million light-years away in the mildly northern constellation of Coma Berenices.

#8 Phantom Galaxy or Messier 74

Phantom Galaxy or Messier 74 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Pisces and smaller than our galaxy.

#9 Galaxy I Zwicky 18

Galaxy I Zwicky 18 is a blue compact dwarf galaxy located about 59 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.

In 1936, because of Hubble, galaxies were grouped into four main types: spiral galaxies, lenticular galaxies, elliptical galaxies and irregular galaxies.

Interestingly enough, more than two-thirds of all observed galaxies are spiral galaxies that have a flat, spinning disk with a central bulge surrounded by spiral arms.

Elliptical galaxies contain many older stars, but little dust and other interstellar matter. Their stars orbit the galactic center but they do so in more random directions. The universe's largest known one may contain up to a trillion stars and span two million light-years across.

Lenticular galaxies, such as the funny Sombrero Galaxy, are between elliptical and spiral galaxies. They have a thin, rotating disk of stars and a central bulge, but they don't have spiral arms. Like elliptical galaxies, they have little dust and interstellar matter, and they seem to form more often in densely populated regions of space.

The rest of the galaxies are called Irregular - such as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. They appear misshapen and lack a distinct form, very often because they are within the gravitational influence of other galaxies close by. They are full of gas and dust, which makes them great nurseries for forming new stars.

#10 NGC 2207 and IC 2163

NGC 2207 and IC 2163 are a pair of colliding spiral galaxies about 80 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major.