Perhaps one of the most striking looking galaxies I know of is "Hoag's Object" (seen below by the Hubble Space Telescope; NED information , Wikipedia article , lookUP information ). The wikipedia article talks of it as an object which fascinates both amateur and professional astronomers. I am really curious to know how it might look through an amateur telescope, and I'd love to see it for myself some day (RA=15 17 14, Dec=+21 35 08 in the Serpens constellation), Astrometry.net can help give an idea - see Hoag's Object images on Flickr found by the service. HST Image of Hoag's Object. Credit: NASA. Through HST as you can see the object appears to be made up of a red spheroidal core, surrounded by a blue ring of star formation (with a gap between the two). The ring shows some spiral structure. In my opinion, one of the most fun things about the object is the more distance ring galaxy which can be seen through the gap (just to the right of 12 o'clock)...
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