... This huge ball of stars predates our Sun. Long before mankind evolved, before dinosaurs roamed, and even before our Earth existed, ancient globs of stars condensed and orbited a young Milky Way Galaxy. ... In visible light, shown above in yellow, this galaxy appears to be a normal dwarf galaxy, as indicated by the yellow smudge in the image center. ... NGC 1531 is the background galaxy with a bright core just above center and NGC 1532 is the foreground spiral galaxy laced with dust lanes. ...