Astronomers using ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope have assembled this colorful image of the small galaxy IC 1613.
This VLT image shows the irregular dwarf galaxy IC 1613. Image credit: ESO.
IC 1613, also known as DDO 8 and LEDA 3844, is an irregular dwarf galaxy located in the constellation of Cetus, approximately 2.41 million light-years away.
Astronomers know IC 1613’s distance to a remarkably high precision, partly due to the unusually low levels of dust lying both within the galaxy and along the line of sight from our own Milky Way Galaxy — something that enables much clearer observations.
The second reason they know the distance to IC 1613 so precisely is that the galaxy hosts a number of notable stars of two types: Cepheid variables and RR Lyrae variables.
Both types of star rhythmically pulsate, growing characteristically bigger and brighter at fixed intervals.
IC 1613 was first spotted in 1906 by the German astronomer Max Wolf.
Nearly two decades later, astronomer Walter Baade used a telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory to successfully make out its individual stars.
From these observations, scientists figured out that IC 1613 must be quite close to Milky Way Galaxy, as it is only possible to resolve single pinprick-like stars in the very nearest galaxies to us.
Astronomers have since confirmed that the galaxy is indeed a member of the Local Group of Galaxies, a collection of more than 50 galaxies that includes the Milky Way.
This composite image includes optical observations from the OmegaCAM, a 32-CCD, 256-million-pixel camera mounted on the 2.6-m VLT Survey Telescope at Paranal Observatory.
