ESA’s Euclid spacecraft has taken a stunning image of the irregular galaxy NGC 6822, which is located in the constellation of Sagittarius.
NGC 6822 lies approximately 1.5 million light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius.
Also known as Barnard’s Galaxy, IC 4895, or Caldwell 57, this galaxy is similar in structure and composition to the Small Magellanic Cloud.
NGC 6822 has a diameter of 7,000 light-years and belongs to the Local Group of galaxies.
It has a low metallicity, meaning that it contains low proportions of elements that are not hydrogen and helium.
NGC 6822 was discovered by the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard in 1884.
In 1925, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble — namesake of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space telescope — was the first to identify NGC 6822 as a ‘remote stellar system’ well beyond the Milky Way.
“NGC 6822 has been observed many times since, most recently by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope,” said members of the Euclid Consortium.
“But Euclid is the first to capture the entire galaxy and its surroundings in high resolution in about one hour, which would not be possible with telescopes on the ground (the atmosphere prevents this sharpness) or with Webb (which makes very detailed images of small parts of the sky).”
“One interesting aspect of this galaxy is that its stars contain low amounts of elements that are not hydrogen and helium.”
“These heavier, metal elements are produced by stars over their lifetimes and are therefore not very common in the early Universe.”
“By studying low-metallicity galaxies like NGC 6822 in our own Galactic neighborhood, we can learn how galaxies evolved in the early Universe,” said Dr. Leslie Hunt, an astronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics and a member of the Euclid Consortium.
In addition to studying the star-formation history of this galaxy, which can now be done thanks to the colour information from Euclid’s near-infrared…
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