Astronomy

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.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 3982Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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Paul Tomaszewski is a science & tech writer as well as a programmer and entrepreneur. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of CosmoBC. He has a degree in computer science from John Abbott College, a bachelor's degree in technology from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, and completed some business and economics classes at Concordia University in Montreal. While in college he was the vice-president of the Astronomy Club. In his spare time he is an amateur astronomer and enjoys reading or watching science-fiction. You can follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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