The pinwheel galaxy or by its official name M63 discovered in the 18th century by French astronomers serves as a prototype of spiral galaxies (like the Milky Way)
This organization of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63 (or M63 for short) seen here in the image taken from the Hubble Space Telescope is reminiscent of the internal structure of the sunflower flower and therefore it was nicknamed "the sunflower galaxy" in addition to its official name.
M63 was discovered by Pierre Machin in 1779. You are included as the 63rd member of the famous catalog of Mashine's colleague - the French astronomer Charles Messier published in 1781. The two astronomers observed the glow of the galaxy located in the small northern galaxy "Hunting Dogs" (Canes Venatici).
Today we know that the Sunflower Galaxy is 27 million light-years away from us, and it belongs to the M52 group - a group of galaxies named after the brightest galaxy in it, which is also a spiral galaxy that has been nicknamed the "Whirlpool Galaxy".
The galactic arms of both the sunflower and the vortex are just a few examples of nature's apparent preference for coils. In galaxies like M63, the arms are blowing in bright light due to the abundance of newly born giant blue-white stars and the gas clouds from which they formed. The Milky Way will also stand out to observers outside of it as a galaxy with bright arms.
The first discoverers had difficulty observing the galaxy in full exclusion and only in the middle of the 19th century Lord Ross identified the spiral structure in this galaxy, which was one of the first in which this structure was identified. In 1971, a 11.8-magnitude supernova erupted in one of the arms of M63.
For information on NASA's "Picture of the Day" website
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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There is still no answer to the question of how a "group" of galaxies was formed
whose members are millions of light years away...
Higher resolution image:
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/hubble_friday_09102015.jpg