Hubble photographed the “space weirdo” – an irregularly shaped dwarf galaxy

Astronomers have obtained a new image of the dwarf galaxy NGC 1705 using the Hubble Space Telescope. It is located in the southern constellation Pictorus, about 17 million light-years from Earth. Scientists call NGC 1705 a “cosmic freak” and is tiny, irregular, and has recently gone through a period of star formation.

Despite their strangeness, dwarf galaxies such as NGC 1705 and others like it can provide valuable information about the overall evolution of galaxies. As a rule, in addition to hydrogen or helium, they have very few elements. It is believed that these were the earliest galaxies in the universe.

The latest data comes from a series of observations that should reveal interactions between stars, star clusters and ionized gas in nearby star-forming galaxies. By observing a specific wavelength of light with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, astronomers wanted to detect thousands of emission nebulae, regions that form when clouds of gas surrounding young stars fill with ultraviolet light, causing them to glow.

Astronomers first looked into the heart of the galaxy NGC 1705 in 1999, but then they used the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, which was replaced in 2009 on the fifth and final Hubble mission. The new tool revealed the galaxy in more detail.

Source: Trash Box

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