Fornax Dwarf Galaxy

    Caption: "The Fornax Dwarf Galaxy is one of the Milky Way's neighbouring dwarf galaxies. These small galaxies should also contain many very old stars, just as the Milky Way does, and a team of astronomers has now shown that this is indeed the case. This image was composed from data from the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The Milky Way is, like all large galaxies, thought to have formed from smaller galaxies (some like the Fornax Dwarf Galaxy in the early days of the observable universe." (Heavily edited.)

    Key characteristics of the Fornax Dwarf Galaxy:

    1. It is classified as dwarf spheriodal galaxy (dSph which is similar to a dwarf elliptical galaxy in having little interstellar dust, consisting mainly of old stars, and having no star formation. However, dwarf spheriodal galaxies are relatively less luminous. Since the Fornax Dwarf Galaxy consisting only of old stars, yours truly does NOT know why it looks so blue in the image, unless the image is a bit false-color.
    2. Satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
    3. Member Local Group.
    4. Distance: 140(10) kpc (460(30) kly).
    5. In constellation Fornax---wouldn't you know it.
    6. Apparent size: 17.0' X 12.6'. Since it is so close, the Fornax Dwarf is relatively large on the celestial sphere which means that any image showing it all will show lots of foreground stars (many with points due to their diffraction patterns) as in this image.
    7. The Fornax Dwarf is sufficiently spread out that you can see through it and it NOT see just a blob of diffraction patterns at least in this high quality image. We are just seeing the brightest stars yours truly guesses. But because they are old stars none are supergiants. There are probably lots of red giants though which have evolved from relatively low stellar mass main-sequence stars: i.e., ∼< 1 M_☉.
    8. None of the stars are resolved, of course.

    Credit/Permission: © ESO, Digitized Sky Survey 2, before or circa 2010 (uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by User:Luiscalcada, 2010) / CC BY-SA 3.0.
    Image link: Wikimedia Commons: File:Fornax dwarf galaxy.jpg.
    Local file: local link: galaxy_fornax_dwarf.html.
    File: Galaxies file: galaxy_fornax_dwarf.html.