The galaxy we call our home - the Milky Way - is a member of a galaxy group known as the local group (it, in turn, contains more than 54 galaxies that span more than ten million light-years from Earth). This is one member of it, NGC 6822 - a dwarf-galaxy that lies more than 1.6 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Sagittarius (this makes it one of our closest celestial neighbors).
NGC 6822 (also known as Barnard's Galaxy, IC 4895 or Caldwell 58) is a barred, irregular galaxy that shares many similarities with the Small Magellanic Cloud, discovered by E. E. Barnard in 1881. Its designation as 'irregular' is due in no small part to the distribution of the stars within the confines in the galaxy, but it is also strange in several other ways as well, including its unusually high abundance of HII regions (or emission nebulae), which contain ionized hydrogen encasing the young stars - mostly concentrated in the upper right portion of this image. Also from our vantage point, the galaxy looks almost rectangular.
Lastly, In the lower left of this image, you can also see several of the most massive stars in the region that are grouped together in the galaxy's arm. You can also spot out two the most famous nebulae in this galaxy, the star forming regions known as Hubble-V and Hubble-X. Each star that lies in this region are more luminous than 100,000 sun-like stars!
Jaime is a freelance writer, who feels like she can't be summarized in a single paragraph. She will say, however, that she is very passionate about science (particularly physics and astronomy). She used this passion to launch 'From Quarks to Quasars' in 2012.
Entities 0 Name: NGC Count: 2 1 Name: Earth Count: 2 2 Name: Barnard Count: 1 3 Name: Caldwell Count: 1 4 Name: E. E. Barnard Count: 1 5 Name: HII Count: 1 6 Name: Small Magellanic Cloud Count: 1 7 Name: Sagittarius Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1vd32Cz Title: Win an Olloclip for the Samsung Galaxy S5! Description: We're coming up to the weekend so what better time for a quick-fire, Android Central giveaway? This past week we looked at Olloclip's first non-Apple compatible lens system available now for the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Galaxy S5. Specifically we've got one for the Galaxy S5 and we're going to give it away to one of you!
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