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Credit & Copyright: Data -
Martin Pugh,
Processing -
Mark Hanson
Explanation:
Grand spiral galaxies
often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their
young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms.
But small galaxies form stars too, like nearby NGC 6822, also known as
Barnard's
Galaxy.
Beyond the rich starfields in the constellation Sagittarius,
NGC 6822 is a mere 1.5 million light-years away, a member of our
Local Group
of galaxies.
A dwarf irregular galaxy similar to the
Small
Magellanic Cloud,
NGC 6822 is about 7,000 light-years across.
Brighter foreground stars in our Milky Way have a spiky appearance.
Behind them,
Barnard's Galaxy is seen to be filled with young blue stars and mottled with
the telltale pinkish hydrogen glow
of star forming regions in this deep
color composite image.
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A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: dwarf galaxy
Publications with words: dwarf galaxy
See also: