NASA has released a beautiful photo taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of an irregular dwarf galaxy known as Leo A.
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the nearby irregular dwarf galaxy Leo A. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.
Leo A lies 2.54 million light-years away toward the constellation of Leo.
It is a member of the Local Group of galaxies — a group that includes our own Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy.
Also known as UGC 5364, LEDA 28868 or Leo III, this galaxy spans about 10,000 light-years.
It consists of multiple stellar populations ranging from 10 million to 10 billion years old.
The estimated mass of Leo A is approximately 80 million solar masses, with at least 80 percent consisting of dark matter.
According to astronomers, Leo A is one of the most isolated galaxies in the Local Group.
It has no obvious structural features beyond being an almost spherical mass of stars, and shows no evidence for recent interactions with any of its few neighbors.
However, the galaxy’s contents are overwhelmingly dominated by relatively young stars, something that would normally be the result of a recent interaction with another galaxy.
This composite image of Leo A was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared portions of the spectrum with both Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
