# NGC 2683 Spiral galaxy

- By: NASA
- Date: 2012-03-31
- Classification: Photograph
- Credit line: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2210.html
- Museum: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NGC_2683_Spiral_galaxy.jpg)
- Rights: Public domain
- Picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/NGC_2683_Spiral_galaxy.jpg/1920px-NGC_2683_Spiral_galaxy.jpg
- Who can see it: Teens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

The NASA Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the "UFO Galaxy." NGC 2683 is a spiral galaxy seen almost edge-on, giving it the shape of a classic science fiction spaceship. This is why the astronomers at the Astronaut Memorial Planetarium and Observatory, Cocoa, Fla., gave it this attention-grabbing nickname.

While a bird's eye view lets us see the detailed structure of a galaxy (such as this Hubble image of a barred spiral), a side-on view has its own perks. In particular, it gives astronomers a great opportunity to see the delicate dusty lanes of the spiral arms silhouetted against the golden haze of the galaxy’s core. In addition, brilliant clusters of young blue stars shine scattered throughout the disc, mapping the galaxy’s star-forming regions.

Perhaps surprisingly, side-on views of galaxies like this one do not prevent astronomers from deducing their structures. Studies of the properties of the light coming from NGC 2683 suggest that this is a barred spiral galaxy, even though the angle we see it at does not let us see this directly.

This image is produced from two adjacent fields observed in visible and infrared light by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. A narrow…