Explanation: Spiral galaxy NGC 3169 looks to be unraveling like a ball of cosmic yarn. It lies some 70 million light-years away, south of bright star Regulus toward the faint constellation Sextans. Wound up spiral arms are pulled out into sweeping tidal tails as NGC 3169 (left) and neighboring NGC 3166 interact gravitationally. Eventually the galaxies will merge into one, a common fate even for bright galaxies in the local universe. Drawn out stellar arcs and plumes are clear indications of the ongoing gravitational interactions across the deep and colorful galaxy group photo. The telescopic frame spans about 20 arc minutes or about 400,000 light-years at the group’s estimated distance, and includes smaller, bluish NGC 3165 to the right. NGC 3169 is also known to shine across the spectrum from radio to X-rays, harboring an active galactic nucleus that is the site of a supermassive black hole.
The climactic chariot race scene in the 1959 adaptation of Ben Hur required 15,000 extras.
The opening scene of The Sound of Music – in which Maria is seen singing in a grassy field high in the Alps – had to be re-shot several times because the downdraft from the helicopter used to film it kept blowing Julie Andrews off her feet.
The “blood” seen being washed down the bathtub plughole in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was actually chocolate sauce.
Psycho was also the first movie in Hollywood history to show a toilet being flushed.
The cast of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movies was almost very different: the studio wanted Laurence Olivier to play Vito Corleone (not Marlon Brando) and suggested Robert Redford instead of Al Pacino to play his son Michael.
When his movie career failed to take off as he had hoped, Harrison Ford retrained as a carpenter and was working as such when he was cast in Star Wars.
The Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now was originally planned to take six weeks to shoot. In the end, it took a year and a half.
The puppet shark used in the movie Jaws was nicknamed “Bruce” by the crew.
Inside the model of E.T. in the Steven Spielberg movie was a two feet ten inch stuntman.
