The Cosmos with UGC 5340

Usually astronomers have to look at galaxies billions of light-years away to study how galaxies form, because light from those galaxies takes billions of years to reach us. But UGC 5340, a bizarre dwarf galaxy only 40 million light-years away, looks surprisingly young for a galaxy so close by. Astronomers aren’t sure if UGC 5340 is as young as it appears, or if its looks might be deceiving. The Hubble Space Telescope captured this view of UGC 5340 as part of the Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey, which studies nearby star-forming galaxies in ultraviolet light.

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