(ORDO NEWS) — The Hubble telescope took a picture of the irregular galaxy NGC 1156. It contains thousands of bright stars, like in spiral galaxies, but NGC 1156 lacks the characteristic “tortuous” structure.
Bright red flowers stand out in the image, twisted from clouds of dust – these are places of intense star formation.
The galaxy also emits a diffuse glow, similar to an elliptical galaxy. The core of NGC 1156 is made up of older red stars.
NGC 1156 is located about 25 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Aries. It has many different features that are of interest to astronomers.
This dwarf irregular galaxy is also classified as isolated: no other galaxy is close enough to affect its shape and ongoing active star formation.
This new image comes from data from the Every Known Nearby Galaxy galaxy program. Astronomers noticed that Hubble only observed three-quarters of the galaxies within 30 million light-years of Earth in sufficient detail to study the composition of the stars within them.
They proposed that, in between larger projects, Hubble could take pictures of the rest of the galaxies, including NGC 1156. Programs like this make the best use of Hubble’s valuable observing time.
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