Barnard’s Galaxy (NGC 6822)

Image Title: Barnard's Galaxy NGC 6822

Copyright: Daniel Stern

Date image was taken: May 28, 2025

Location: Rio Hurtado, Chile

Data Acquisition Method: Remote Observatory

Description and Details: CDK-17/L-500
Moravian C5-100
RGB Ha (77, 90, 85, 50) x 300 sec = 25.2 hours

Barnard’s Galaxy, also known as NGC 6822, IC 4895, and Caldwell 57, is a small galaxy about 1.6 million light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. It was discovered in 1884 by Edward E. Barnard, who described it as a faint, fuzzy patch—typical of how many distant galaxies were misclassified back then as just “nebulae.”
That changed in 1925, when Edwin Hubble studied it using the powerful 100-inch Hooker Telescope. He was able to resolve individual Cepheid variable stars and estimate its distance. While his estimate—around 700,000 light-years—was off by today’s standards, it clearly showed that NGC 6822 lies outside the Milky Way. This made it the first known irregular galaxy proven to be extragalactic, and it played an important role in establishing the idea that the universe contains many galaxies beyond our own.

Name: DANIEL STERN

Website or Facebook Profile: https://www.astrobin.com/users/dstern/