Irregular Galaxies

News & Articles

A whitish, whirlpool-like galaxy at middle of top edge, and a tadpole-shaped structure sweeps from left to right across lower half. A label pointing to outer, left of galaxy reads “Earth.” Faint, purple haze labeled “Milky Way Halo” surrounds galaxy and stretches to graphic’s edges.  The tadpole-shaped object is the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, with its own halo and streaming tail. Semi-circular, progressively darker layers of purple labeled “LMC Halo” surround the LMC, which appears roughly circular, with a central, light-yellow bar. Cloud-like features sprinkled with white specks surround this bar. Trailing the LMC is a large, tail-like  feature labeled “Stream.” At the bottom left corner of graphic are several small, bright points of light labeled “Quasars.” Three light blue lines point from the label “Earth” through the LMC’s halo, and to three corresponding quasars. At the bottom, right corner is the label “Artist’s Concept.”

NASA’s Hubble Sees Aftermath of Galaxy’s Scrape with Milky Way

5 min read

A story of survival is unfolding at the outer reaches of our galaxy, and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is witnessing…

Article3 weeks ago
A dwarf irregular galaxy. It appears as a cloud of bluish gas, filled with point-like stars that spread beyond the edge of the gas. A few glowing red clouds sit near its center. Many other objects are visible around it: distant galaxies in the background, four-pointed stars in the foreground, and star clusters that are part of the galaxy appear as bright spots surrounded by more tiny stars.

Hubble Studies a Potential Galactic Merger

3 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 5238, located 14.5 million light-years from Earth in…

Article5 months ago
An irregular galaxy with a large central body of dull-colored stars and distorted arms around it. Brightly glowing pink areas where stars are forming dot the arms, along with bluish gas that is brighter than the galactic core. Two large arms flank the left and right of the body, and smaller streams of stars emerge from the top. Other distant galaxies are visible on the edges of the image.

Hubble Spots the Spider Galaxy

2 min read

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the gauzy-looking celestial body UGC 5829, an irregular galaxy that lies…

Article9 months ago
An irregular galaxy: a cloud of tiny, point-like stars on a dark background. The cloud is densest along a broad, curved band across the center of the image. It is colored a faint blue with glowing purplish patches, and the stars grow less dense out to the edges but don’t fully vanish. A few distant background galaxies appear among the stars as glowing spots.

Hubble Spots a Galaxy Shrouded by Stars

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a densely packed field of stars laid upon a background of dust, gas,…

Article10 months ago
A field of galaxies. UGC 8091 is at the top and center of the image. It appears as a haze of stars through which more distant galaxies are visible. Two, bright, pinkish-red nebulae are also visible.

NASA’s Hubble Presents a Holiday Globe of Stars

2 min read

The billion stars in galaxy UGC 8091 resemble a sparkling snow globe in this festive Hubble Space Telescope image from…

Article12 months ago
An irregular galaxy, a narrow streak of stars crossed by faint dust lanes. A bright glow surrounds it, appearing like a beam of light in the center of a dark background. A scatter of small, distant galaxies and a single, bright star surround the galaxy.

Hubble Looks at a Late-type Galaxy

3 min read

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features NGC 2814, an irregular galaxy that lies about 85 million light-years from Earth. In this image, which…

Article12 months ago