{"id":621211,"date":"2026-09-11T08:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T08:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621211\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T08:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T08:14:09","slug":"apod-2026-september-11-m83-the-southern-pinwheel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621211\/","title":{"rendered":"APOD: 2026 September 11 &#8211; M83: The Southern Pinwheel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p-md margin-0 media-detail-hero__description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tExplanation:\u00a0Beautiful and bright\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/hubble\/science\/explore-the-night-sky\/hubble-messier-catalog\/messier-83\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">spiral galaxy M83<\/a>\u00a0lies some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawastsoc.org\/deepsky\/hya\/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hydra<\/a>. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, the Southern Pinwheel. Still, reddish\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap061123.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">star forming regions<\/a>\u00a0that dot this cosmic pinwheel&#8217;s spiral arms have suggested another nickname, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap190629.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Thousand-Ruby Galaxy<\/a>. A mere 40,000 light-years across, smaller than the Milky Way, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap080110.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Centaurus A<\/a>. In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap030206.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">at x-ray energies<\/a>, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp, groundbased telescopic view also features foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies.<\/p>\n<p>APOD&#8217;s main NASA site is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/asterisk.apod.com\/viewtopic.php?t=45023\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">moving<\/a>:\u00a0From\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">apod.nasa.gov<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/apod\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">science.nasa.gov\/apod<\/a><br \/>Tomorrow&#8217;s picture:\u00a0lunar sun catcher\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Explanation:\u00a0Beautiful and bright\u00a0spiral galaxy M83\u00a0lies some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[243471,61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-621211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-apod","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}