NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Collection

NGC 1569: Starburst in a Small Galaxy

Grand spiral galaxies [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] arms. But small, irregular [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] galaxies form stars too. In fact, as pictured here [ http://hubble.esa.i…index.cfm?fobjectid= 34594 ], dwarf galaxy NGC 1569 is apparently undergoing a burst of star forming activity, thought to have begun over 25 million years ago. The resulting turbulent environment [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] is fed by supernova explosions as the cosmic detonations spew out material and trigger further star formation. Two massive star clusters - youthful counterparts to globular star clusters [ http://www.seds.org…] in our own spiral Milky Way [ http://www.anzwers.…galaxy.html ] galaxy - are seen left of center in the gorgeous Hubble Space Telescope [ http://hubblesite.o…] image. The picture spans about 1,500 light-years across NGC 1569. A mere 7 million light-years distant, this relatively close starburst galaxy offers astronomers an excellent opportunity to study [ http://arxiv.org/ab…] stellar populations in rapidly evolving galaxies. NGC 1569 lies in the long-necked [ http://www.nature-w…] constellation Camelopardalis [ http://www.dibonsmi…].

ESA [ http://hubble.esa.i…], NASA [ http://www.nasa.gov…], P. Anders (Göttingen Univ. [ http://www.uni-goet…]) et al. [ http://arxiv.org/ab…]

dwarf galaxy

NGC 1569

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

Opportunity

Camelopardalis

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

New General Catalogue (NGC)

http://antwrp.gsfc.…

SPD-APOD-ap040205