Anatomy of a bird

Image taken with the NACO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope in the K-band. Also indicated are the different parts of the 'Bird'. There is a barred spiral galaxy at the heart of the Bird, and a strongly disturbed massive galaxy just south of it, while the head of the Bird consists of an irregular galaxy with very active star formation. The wings span a region in space of about 100,000 light-years, as much as our own Milky Way. North is up and East is to the left. The image covers about 25 x 25 arcsec.