Even at this great distance the appeal of this galaxy is in no way diminished. Tightly wound spiral arms seem to merge into delicately woven rings of star formation. Over billions of years this galaxy may eventually quiet down and cease forming the young hot bluish stars and become a more uniform lenticular-like galaxy. As for this moment, this image captures this galaxy at a showy stage and may be one of the higher resolution color images of this popular galaxy currently to be found.

NGC 6118 is a grand design spiral galaxy with prominent, well-defined arms in its disk: