June 18, 2025 at 2:09 PM EDT By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronomers have revealed a nearby spiral galaxy in all its brilliant glory, shining in thousands of colors. The dazzling panoramic shot released Wednesday of the Sculptor galaxy by a telescope in Chile is so detailed that it’s already serving as a star-packed map. This handout provided by the European Southern Observatory shows a detailed, thousand-colour image of the Sculptor Galaxy captured with the MUSE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). (ESO via AP) Scientists used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to observe the galaxy for some 50 hours, stitching together more than 100 exposures to create the picture. The image spans 65,000 light-years, almost the entire galaxy. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. Sculptor — officially labeled NGC 253 — is considered a starburst galaxy, one heavy with stellar action. It’s located 11 million light-years away in the Southern Hemisphere’s constellation Sculptor, and easy to view with binoculars or small telescopes. “The Sculptor galaxy is in a sweet spot,” the observatory’s Enrico Congiu, who led the research, said in a statement. “It is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible detail, but at the same time, big enough that we can still see it as a whole system.” Related Articles