Just in time for the holidays, the European Southern Observatory is showing off some of the loveliest galaxy images they’ve taken to date. NGC 613 is a beautiful barred spiral galaxy in the southern constellation Sculptor. If you look closely, you can see dust lanes along the central bar. Astronomers have found starbirth nurseries at either end of the bar, and in the area surrounding the nucleus.

Whenever I see pictures like this, I am reminded again of just how magnificent the cosmos is. I once wrote that galaxies were like cosmic snowflakes, drifting through the universe, no two exactly alike. The more of these kinds of images I see, the more convinced I am that this little bit of poetic license is literally true!