A guide to what's up in the sky for Southern Australia

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Galaxy NGC 6744 in Pavo (2nd Jul 2025)

This is NGC 6744, a spiral galaxy bearing similarities to our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

Located around 30 million light-years away in the constellation Pavo, NGC 6744 exhibits a luminous core and spiral arms spanning 175,000 light-years across, a larger but similar anatomy to our Milky Way.

Moreover, to the lower right of NGC 6744, at the end of the spiral arm, is a faint blob. This is its companion galaxy known as NGC 6744A. The companionship between these galaxies is analogous to
that between the Milky Way and its dwarf companion the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Though it’s impossible to get an external view of our galaxy, these similarities offer insight into how the Milky Way might look to a distant observer.