Galaxy Resembling Amorphous Cloud of Vapor Imaged

Astronomers operating the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have just released a new image collected by the famous observatory, showing the galaxy DDO 82. What is remarkable about this object is that it represents an entire class of space structures, which is indeed very common in space.

Grand-design spiral galaxies, regular spirals galaxies and barrel galaxies may look amazing, but they are rather rare, compared to the massive number of smaller, less well-defined objects. From a distance, galaxies such as DDO 82 look like small, amorphous clouds of vapor.

Another reason why this particular galaxy is so undefined is that it was subjected to a large number of gravitational interactions over the course of its history. This means that several other dwarf galaxies narrowly missed it over billions of years.

“DDO 82 can be found in the constellation of Ursa Major (the Great Bear) approximately 13 million light-years away. The object is considered part of the M81 Group of around three dozen galaxies,” NASA reports.