NGC 4013 is a spiral galaxy, like the Milky Way, located in the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear). It lies at a distance of 55 million light years - for comparison, the Andromeda galaxy lies 2.2 million light years away. It was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). The central bulge lies behind the bright star in the upper left of the image - a star which, like all other visible stars in this image, belongs to our own galaxy.
It is unusual to be able to observe a galaxy edge-on. Such views illustrate the amount of gas and dust present in galactic planes, as it obscures light from stars in the disc and central bulge. This image also reveals that the gas and dust extends well above and below the galactic plane. The blue patches seen in front of the gas and dust veins are regions of star formation in NGC 4013 containing young, blue stars.
