Leo A in the eye of Hubble

Leo A is about 2.6 million light-years from Earth and a member of the Local Group of galaxies which is a group that includes the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxy.

"It has no obvious structural features beyond being a roughly spherical mass of stars, and shows no evidence for recent interactions with any of its few neighbors. However, the galaxy’s contents are overwhelmingly dominated by relatively young stars, something that would normally be the result of a recent interaction with another galaxy. Around 90% of the stars in Leo A are less than eight billion years old — young in cosmic terms! This raises a number of intriguing questions about why star formation in Leo A did not take place on the “usual” timescale, but instead waited until it was good and ready."

Source: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-peers-into-the-mouth-of-leo-a

Jun 08, 2022 -- Say hello to our nearest neighbor galaxy–-Andromeda! It is about 2.5 million light years away from our Sun.

Love this colored image of Andromeda!! The image was taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and shared by NASA on Instagram. Blue represents far-ultraviolet light, green shows mid-way and red is near-ultraviolet light.

"The galaxy’s backbone of mature stars is visible in blue, while the yellow and red rings show dust heated by newborn, massive stars."