This image, captured with the OmegaCAM camera on ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope in Chile, shows an unusually clean small galaxy. IC 1613 contains very little cosmic dust, allowing astronomers to explore its contents with great clarity. Credit: ESO
German astronomer Max Wolf discovered IC 1613’s faint glow in 1906. In 1928, his compatriot Walter Baade used the more powerful 2.5m telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory in CA to successfully make out its individual stars. From these observations, astronomers figured out the galaxy must be quite close to the Milky Way, as it is only possible to resolve single pinprick-like stars in the very nearest galaxies to us.
Astronomers have since confirmed that IC 1613 is indeed a member of the Local Group, a collection of more than 50 galaxies that inclu...
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