Thirty million light years away. Astronomers think that this galaxy looks the most like our own Milky Way when viewed from the same angle, though NGC 6744 is physically larger.
Because we’re in our own galaxy, we have no way of knowing for sure what it looks like from a distance. It’s going to be an extremely long time before we can send an unmanned doodad that far away to be able to snap a picture of home, if we ever can. Therefore, astronomers have to infer what the Milky Way looks like. And they think the above is the closest they have found to a Milky Way twin.
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