Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years 
away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. This Hubble Space Telescope 
composite view of the gorgeous island universe was released at this week's 
meeting of the American Astronomical Society as one of the largest Hubble 
images ever made of a complete galaxy. NGC 1300 spans over 100,000 light-years 
and the Hubble image reveals striking details of the galaxy's dominant central 
bar and majestic spiral arms. In fact, on close inspection the nucleus of this 
classic barred spiral itself shows a remarkable region of spiral structure 
about 3,000 light-years across. Unlike other spiral galaxies, including our 
own Milky Way, NGC 1300 is not presently known to have a massive central black 
hole.

----------

In 2005 the Hubble Space Telescope took a look at NGC 1300. Its resolution, a 
myriad of fine details, some of which have never before been seen, is seen 
throughout the galaxy's arms, disk, bulge, and nucleus. Blue and red supergiant 
stars, star clusters, and star-forming regions are well resolved across the 
spiral arms, and dust lanes trace out fine structures in the disk and bar. 
Numerous more distant galaxies are visible in the background, and are seen even 
through the densest regions of NGC 1300.

In the core of the larger spiral structure of NGC 1300, the nucleus shows its 
own extraordinary and distinct "grand-design" spiral structure that is about 
3,300 light-years long. Only galaxies with large-scale bars appear to have these 
grand-design inner disks — a spiral within a spiral. Models suggest that the gas 
in a bar can be funneled inwards, and then spiral into the center through the 
grand-design disk, where it can potentially fuel a central black hole. NGC 1300 
is not known to have an active nucleus, however, indicating either that there 
is no black hole, or that it is not accreting matter. The galaxy is roughly 
150,000 light-years in diameter.