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The James Webb Space Telescope's latest cosmic portrait highlights the dwarf galaxy NGC 4449.
Image : Google
NGC 4449, located 12.5 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (Hunting Dogs)
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shares many characteristics with our own Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the Milky Way's satellite galaxy. Both are small and irregular in shape, with a distinctive bar running through the center.
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However, unlike the LMC, which has only one extreme region of star formation, the 30 Doradus region, also known as the Tarantula Nebula
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NGC 4449 has increased star formation rates throughout its length and breadth. Indeed, there is so much star formation going on that NGC 4449 is referred to as a "starburst.
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Starbursts occur when a galaxy's molecular hydrogen gas is stirred up by a gravitational interaction, such as a collision with another galaxy.
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NGC 4449 is part of the M94 Group, which consists of about two dozen galaxies, so it has a number of neighbors with whom it can interact.
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Indeed, in 2012. A professional-amateur collaboration led by David Martinez-Delgado of the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy in Germany
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which included the work of several notable amateur astrophotographers as well as observations by the eight-meter Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii
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discovered evidence for just such an interaction. The team resolved a stream of stars pulled from a smaller galaxy that was consumed by NGC 4449.
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