The European Space Agency (ESA), has shared another stunning image of NGC 1705, a tiny galaxy that lies in the southern constellation Pictor. It has recently experienced a starburst, a sudden burst of star formation.
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope used its Wide Field Camera 3 to capture the cosmic oddball. The dwarf irregular galaxy is approximately 17 million light years from Earth.
According to ESAThe data in the image was derived from a series of observations that aimed to reveal the interplay between stars, clusters and ionised gases in nearby star-forming galaxies. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 was used to observe H-alpha, a wavelength of light that is used by astronomers to locate thousands of emission nubulae, which are glowing clouds interstellar gas.
NGC 1705, a dwarf galaxy, can offer valuable insight into the history of galaxies during the early universe. Astronomers believe that dwarf galaxy systems were the first to begin forming stars in early universe. They are the building blocks of larger objects such as spiral and other elliptical galactices, which were later created through mergers and accretion.
In the latest ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week we revisit a galactic oddball — a small, irregularly shaped dwarf galaxy that has recently undergone a spate of star formation known as a starburst https://t.co/6lcGDyGymZCredit: @esa / @HUBBLE_space / @NASA, R. Chandar pic.twitter.com/qc6Bjxeyot
— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) January 31, 2022
