Also known as NGC123 this fascinating galaxy is dominated by millions of
bright stars and dark dust, caught up in a gravitational swirl of
spiral arms rotating about the center. Open clusters containing bright
blue stars can be seen sprinkled along these spiral arms, while dark
lanes of dense interstellar dust can be seen sprinkled between them.
Less visible, but detectable, are billions of dim normal stars and vast
tracts of interstellar gas, together wielding such high mass that they
dominate the dynamics of the inner galaxy. Invisible are even greater
amounts of matter in a form we don’t yet know - pervasive dark matter
needed to explain the motions of the visible in the outer galaxy.
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