Astronomy Picture of the Week – Spiral Galaxy NGC 3982

This spiral galaxy, called NGC 3982, looks similar to our own galaxy but it is much smaller. NGC 3982 spans about 30,000 light-years which makes it roughly one-third of the size of the Milky Way galaxy. It is located about 68 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. This image is composed of pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) between March 2000 and August 2009.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)