English: IC10 is a dwarf galaxy undergoing a lot of star formation. These are always interesting to look at because of the glowing gas clouds commonly associated with such activity. The nebulas in my picture this time are two different colors because I only had partial coverage for the narrowband H-alpha filter. So the places where the fluffy clouds are red were included, but the places where they are greenish were excluded. Maybe it was strange of me to do this, but I take what I can get from the archive.

Easily visible within the galaxy are numerous clusters of bright, young, blue stars. Some are surrounded by relatively denser hydrogen gas, while others seem to exist independently from it already, forming sparkling open clusters. A number of older, more densely packed balls of stars called globular clusters are also readily apparent, with individual stars easily resolved within each. Another thing that makes this image beautiful are the few Milky Way stars populating the foreground. These are easy to spot because they are apparently brighter and larger, and often form noticeably cross-shaped diffraction spikes.

Of note during processing, those foreground stars sure did make life difficult for me. Nearly every one of them had charge bleeds that had to be cleaned off. The chip gaps were variously missing one channel or two. I worked with what I had to avoid cloning data, but in places where only F435W was available, I did create some noise texture to assist with blending and avoid visual distraction. This is easily noticeable at close inspection, but harder to detect in the broader image. This is something I do intentionally so that interested observers can make the distinction between areas of complete and incomplete data while maintaining and aesthetically pleasing image. There is also a small bit of missing data in the lower left corner I did not crop off because I did not want the aspect ratio to be so wide.

Data from the following proposals was used: Intermediate Mass Stars and Unusual Stellar Mass Limits in a Starburst Galaxy A Chandra and HST Study of IC 10: The Nearest Starburst Galaxy to the Milky Way

Red: ACS/WFC F814W + WFPC2 F656N Green: ACS/WFC F606W Blue: ACS/WFC F435W

North is NOT up. It is 59.8° clockwise from up.