66 ASTRONOMY • JUNE 2022
BREAKTHROUGH
DANCING WITH THE DOLPHINFISH
When observers size up the southern constellation Dorado the Dolphinfish, they usually focus on the Milky Way’s grand
satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. But there’s another island universe within Dorado’s confines worth viewing:
the Spanish Dancer Galaxy (NGC 1566). Despite lying some 50 million light-years away, this stunning face-on spiral glows
at 10th magnitude. Part of its luminosity comes from an active nucleus powered by a supermassive black hole weighing
nearly 10 million Suns. But the galaxy’s beauty stems from two graceful arms peppered with bright blue stars that wind out
from a core filled with older, yellower suns. The reddish star just above the galaxy is an 8th-magnitude foreground object
located 1,000 light-years from Earth. DARK ENERGY SURVEY/DOE/FNAL/DECAM/CTIO/NOIRLAB/NSF/AURA