Galaxy Picker
About the images
Thirteen galaxies, each a real photograph — twelve from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, plus our own Milky Way from ESO (all CC BY 4.0).
Discover a random galaxy, shown in a real image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Tap Reveal — the field comes into focus on one galaxy, and a card opens with its type, distance and the constellation you'd find it in. From the Whirlpool and the Sombrero to the colliding Antennae.
- Real Hubble images
- For astronomy class
- A fresh galaxy each time
The Galaxy Picker reveals a random galaxy — not as a name on a list, but as a real photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope. The field comes into focus on one galaxy, and a card opens with its type, its distance, and the constellation you'd point a telescope toward to find it.
Real images, not illustrations
Every galaxy here is shown in an actual image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope — the Whirlpool's grand spiral, the Sombrero's dark dust lane, the Antennae galaxies mid-collision. Seeing the real thing is what turns "a galaxy" into something you remember. Use it to give every student a different galaxy to research, to open an astronomy lesson, or simply to fall down a cosmic rabbit hole.
What the card tells you
- Type — spiral, barred spiral, elliptical, starburst, or a pair of colliding galaxies.
- Distance — how far its light has travelled to reach us, in light-years.
- Constellation — the patch of sky it sits in, from Ursa Major to Virgo.
- Catalogue — its Messier or NGC number, so you can look it up or find it yourself.
Every galaxy in the field
| Galaxy | Type | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| The Milky Way | Barred spiral | Our home galaxy |
| Andromeda (M31) | Spiral | 2.5M light-years |
| Whirlpool (M51) | Spiral | 31M light-years |
| Sombrero (M104) | Spiral | 28M light-years |
| Pinwheel (M101) | Spiral | 21M light-years |
| Cigar (M82) | Starburst | 12M light-years |
| Bode's (M81) | Spiral | 12M light-years |
| Centaurus A | Elliptical | 13M light-years |
| Antennae | Colliding | ~60M light-years |
| Messier 106 | Spiral | 24M light-years |
| Messier 77 | Barred spiral | 47M light-years |
| NGC 1300 | Barred spiral | 61M light-years |
| NGC 1672 | Barred spiral | 60M light-years |
Fair, and free
Each reveal is decided by a cryptographically fair random draw, so every galaxy has an exactly equal chance. Exploring the rest of the science shelf? Pair it with the Planet Picker for worlds closer to home, or the Space Mission Picker for the craft that explore them.
Galaxy images courtesy of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and — for our own Milky Way — ESO, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA; ESO/S. Brunier.