Caption: An image of the nearby galaxy NGC 6744 (i.e., the Milky Way twin) taken with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla. The image is NOT true color though it seems NOT so far from true color.

Features:

1. NGC 6744 strongly resembles the Milky Way, and so gives us a good idea of how the Milky Way would look from the outside. It is considered the Milky Way twin.

2. Remember, we are looking at NGC 6744 through a haze of foreground stars. The brightest ones are obvious since they show diffraction patterns which have points. Usually there are 4 points due to the 4 arms that hold the camera in the telescope. The 4-fold symmetry of the 4 arms gives a 4-fold to the diffraction pattern.

   But there are also background galaxies and perhaps nearby dwarf galaxies and globular clusters. Finite-size galaxies can be identified as such.

   In fact, faint foreground stars and unresolved other astronomical objects CANNOT usually be differentiated in an image. Someone has to take a spectrum and use that to classify the astronomical object.

3. NGC 6744 is at 9.5 ± 1.5 Mpc in constellation Pavo.

   It is a Hubble sequence galaxy type SABbc spiral galaxies.

   The "AB" means it is an intermediate spiral galaxy which is spiral galaxies intermediate between being an unbarred spiral galaxy and a barred spiral galaxy

4. NGC 6744 is also a flocculent spiral which means its spiral arms look fluffy, patchy, and discontinuous and they are usually more than two. The opposite to flocculent spiral galaxies are grand design spiral galaxies which have well defined spiral arms. Only about 10 % of spiral galaxies are grand design spirals.