Described in a June 28, 2016 press release, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured what they describe as a “July 4th skyrocket.” The dwarf galaxy Kiso 5639 is birthing stars. The image is a composite of separate exposures dating February and July 2015.
Kiso 5639 is a galaxy in the Ursa Major constellation and is 80 million light-years away. It looks like a brilliant blazing head with a long, star-studded tail because the galaxy is flattened like a pancake and is tilted edge-on. Astronomers suggest that the star birth is “sparked by intergalactic gas raining on one end of the galaxy as it drifts through space.”
According to lead researcher Debra Elmegreen of Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York:
“It’s a stage that galaxies, including our Milky Way, must go through as they are growing up.”
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