NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a striking new photo of UGC 4459, a type of galaxy known as an irregular dwarf galaxy.
This image, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, shows an irregular dwarf galaxy known as UGC 4459, lying about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.
UGC 4459, otherwise known as LEDA 24050, DDO 53 and VV 499, is a small galaxy with a visual magnitude of 13.7.
It is located in the constellation Ursa Major, approximately 12 million light-years away.
This galaxy is a member of the M81 galaxy group whose main members are Messier 81, Messier 82, NGC 3077, and NGC 2976, and include a number of dwarf galaxies.
UGC 4459’s diffused and disorganized appearance is characteristic of an irregular dwarf galaxy.
Lacking a distinctive structure or shape, these galaxies are often chaotic in appearance, with neither a nuclear bulge nor any trace of spiral arms.
Scientists suspect that some irregular dwarf galaxies were once spiral or elliptical galaxies, but were later deformed by the gravitational pull of nearby objects.
Rich with young blue stars and older red stars, UGC 4459 has a stellar population of several billion.
Though seemingly impressive, this is small when compared to the 200 to 400 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.
Observations with Hubble have shown that because of their low masses, star formation is very low compared to larger galaxies. Only very little of their original gas has been turned into stars.
Thus, these dwarf galaxies are interesting to study to better understand primordial environments and the star formation process.
This image of UGC 4459 was made from separate exposures taken in the visible, infrared and ultraviolet portions of the spectrum with both Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
Astronomer Judy Schmidt submitted a version of the image to the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition.
