Starburst Galaxy IC 10 in Cassiopeia | Mayall Telescope

Starburst Galaxy IC 10 in Cassiopeia | Mayall Telescope

This striking image from NOIRLab’s Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) presents a portrait of the irregular galaxy IC 10, a disorderly starburst galaxy close to the Milky Way. As well as a population of bright young stars, this irregular galaxy harbors exotic Wolf-Rayet stars and a black hole. IC 10 lies around 2 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Cassiopeia. Though this distance seems huge, it puts IC 10 in the ever-growing Local Group of galaxies.

The Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope is a four-meter (158 inches) reflector telescope in Arizona named after the American observational astronomer of the same name. The telescope saw first light on February 27, 1973, and was the second-largest in the world at that time.

Credit: KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA

Data Obtained and Processed by: P. Massey (Lowell Obs.), G. Jacoby, K. Olsen, & C. Smith (NOAO/AURA/NSF)

Image Processing: Travis Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin

Release Date: June 18, 2020

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