                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

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                               2021 December 2

                         NGC 6822: Barnard's Galaxy
            Image Credit & Copyright: Dietmar Hager, Eric Benson

   Explanation: Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory,
   flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful,
   symmetric spiral arms. But small galaxies form stars too, like nearby
   NGC 6822, also known as Barnard's Galaxy. Beyond the rich starfields in
   the constellation Sagittarius, NGC 6822 is a mere 1.5 million
   light-years away, a member of our Local Group of galaxies. A dwarf
   irregular galaxy similar to the Small Magellanic Cloud, NGC 6822 is
   about 7,000 light-years across. Brighter foreground stars in our Milky
   Way have a spiky appearance. Behind them, Barnard's Galaxy is seen to
   be filled with young blue stars and mottled with the telltale pinkish
   hydrogen glow of star forming regions in this deep color composite
   image.

                    Tomorrow's picture: Queequeg's comet
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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