NGC 1569 is a

dwarf Dwarf or dwarves may refer to: Common uses *Dwarf (folklore), a being from Germanic mythology and folklore * Dwarf, a person or animal with dwarfism Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Dwarf (''Dungeons & Dragons''), a humanoid ...

irregular galaxy An irregular galaxy is a galaxy that does not have a distinct regular shape, unlike a spiral or an elliptical galaxy. Irregular galaxies do not fall into any of the regular classes of the Hubble sequence, and they are often chaotic in appearance, ...

in Camelopardalis. The galaxy is relatively nearby and consequently, the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most vers ...

can easily resolve the stars within the galaxy. The distance to the galaxy was previously believed to be only 2.4 Mpc (7.8

Mly A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

). However, in 2008 scientists studying images from Hubble calculated the galaxy's distance at nearly 11 million light-years away, about 4 million light-years farther than previous thought, meaning it is a member of the

IC 342 IC 342 (also known as Caldwell 5) is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis, located relatively close to the Milky Way. Despite its size and actual brightness, its location behind dusty areas near the galactic equator m ...

group of galaxies.

Physical characteristics

NGC 1569 is smaller than the Small Magellanic Cloud, but brighter than the latter or the Large Magellanic Cloud

Starburst

NGC 1569 is characterized by a large starburst. It has formed stars at a rate 100 times greater than that of the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

during the last 100 million years.Hubble Resolves Puzzle about Loner Starburst Galaxy
Newswise, Retrieved on November 17, 2008. It contains two prominent super star clusters with different histories. Both clusters have experienced episodic star formation. Super star cluster A, located in the northwest of the galaxy and actually formed of two close clusters (NGC 1569 A1 and NGC 1569 A2), contains young stars (including Wolf-Rayet stars) that formed less than 5 million years ago (in NGC 1569 A1) as well as older red stars (in NGC 1569 A2). Super star cluster B, located near the center of the galaxy, contains an older stellar population of

red giants A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass (roughly 0.3–8 solar masses ()) in a late phase of stellar evolution. The outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius large and the surface temperature around o ...

and

red supergiants Red supergiants (RSGs) are stars with a supergiant luminosity class ( Yerkes class I) of spectral type K or M. They are the largest stars in the universe in terms of volume, although they are not the most massive or luminous. Betelgeuse and Anta ...

. Both of these star clusters are thought to have masses equivalent to the masses of the

globular cluster A globular cluster is a spheroidal conglomeration of stars. Globular clusters are bound together by gravity, with a higher concentration of stars towards their centers. They can contain anywhere from tens of thousands to many millions of membe ...

s in the

(approximately (6-7) × 10⁵ solar masses). Numerous smaller star clusters, some of them having masses similar to those of small globular clusters or

R136 R136 (formerly known as RMC 136 from the Radcliffe Observatory Magellanic Clouds catalogue) is the central concentration of stars in the NGC 2070 star cluster, which lies at the centre of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Wh ...

in the Large Magellanic Cloud, with relatively young ages (between 2 million years and 1 billion years) have also been identified. These results, along with the results from other dwarf galaxies such as the Large Magellanic Cloud and

NGC 1705 NGC 1705 is a peculiar lenticular galaxy and a blue compact dwarf galaxy (BCD) in the southern constellation of Pictor, positioned less than a degree to the east of Iota Pictoris, and is undergoing a starburst. With an apparent visual magnit ...

, demonstrate that star formation in dwarf galaxies does not occur continuously but instead occurs in a series of short, nearly instantaneous bursts. NGC 1569

The numerous supernovae produced in the galaxy as well as the strong stellar winds of its stars have produced filaments and bubbles of ionized hydrogen with respective sizes of up to 3,700 and 380 light years that shine excited by the light of the young stars contained within them and that are conspicuous on images taken with large telescopes. The NGC 1569 starburst is believed to have been triggered by interactions with other galaxies of the IC 342 group, in particular a nearby cloud of neutral hydrogen. A 2013 study suggested the presence of tidal tails linking this galaxy with

and the dwarf galaxy

UGCA 92 The Uppsala General Catalogue of Galaxies (UGC) is a catalogue of 12,921 galaxies visible from the northern hemisphere. It was first published in 1973. The catalogue includes essentially all galaxies north of declination -02°30' and to a limiti ...

(see below) whose nature, however, is unclear and may actually be structures within our galaxy.

Blueshift

The

spectrum A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors ...

of NGC 1569 is

blueshift In physics, a redshift is an increase in the wavelength, and corresponding decrease in the frequency and photon energy, of electromagnetic radiation (such as light). The opposite change, a decrease in wavelength and simultaneous increase in f ...

ed. This means that the galaxy is moving towards the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

. In contrast, the spectra of most other galaxies are redshifted because of the expansion of the universe.

Environment

The dwarf irregular galaxy

is often assumed to be a companion of NGC 1569; however, its relationship to the starburst the latter is experiencing is unclear, with some authors suggesting UGCA 92 has not started it and others suggesting it has interacted with NGC 1569, being connected with it by a tidal tail and several filaments of neutral hydrogen; however, it is still unclear if those structures are associated with them or actually within the Milky Way, being unrelated with those two galaxies.

References

External links

NGC 1569 at ESA/Hubble
* *
NGC 1569 at Constellation Guide
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ngc 1569 Dwarf irregular galaxies Camelopardalis (constellation)

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IC 342/Maffei Group