Starship Asterisk*

[c][imghover=http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2017/ic10/ic10_w11.jpg]http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2017/ic10/i ... er_525.jpg[/imghover]Credit: Optical: Bill Snyder Astrophotography
X-ray: NASA/CXC/UMass Lowell/S. Laycock et al.[/c][hr][/hr]

In 1887, American astronomer Lewis Swift discovered a glowing cloud, or nebula, that turned out to be a small galaxy about 2.2 billion light years from Earth. Today, it is known as the "starburst" galaxy IC 10, referring to the intense star formation activity occurring there.

More than a hundred years after Swift's discovery, astronomers are studying IC 10 with the most powerful telescopes of the 21st century. New observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory reveal many pairs of stars that may one day become sources of perhaps the most exciting cosmic phenomenon observed in recent years: gravitational waves. ...

Starburst galaxies like IC 10 are excellent places to search for X-ray binaries because they are churning out stars rapidly. Many of these newly born stars will be pairs of young and massive stars. The most massive of the pair will evolve more quickly and leave behind a black hole or a neutron star partnered with the remaining massive star. If the separation of the stars is small enough, an X-ray binary system will be produced.

This new composite image of IC 10 combines X-ray data from Chandra (blue) with an optical image (red, green, blue) taken by amateur astronomer Bill Snyder from the Heavens Mirror Observatory in Sierra Nevada, California. The X-ray sources detected by Chandra appear as a darker blue than the stars detected in optical light. ...

• Astrophysical Journal 836(1):50 (2017 Feb 10) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/836/1/50
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1611.08611 > 25 Nov 2016

• Astrophysical Journal 836(1):51 (2017 Feb 10) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/836/1/51
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1701.03803 > 13 Jan 2017

Chandra/NASA wrote:
In 1887, American astronomer Lewis Swift discovered a glowing cloud, or nebula, that turned out to be a small galaxy about 2.2 billion light years from Earth.

Wikipedia wrote:

IC 10 is the only known starburst galaxy in the Local Group of galaxies.

Distance 2.2 ± 0.2 Mly (660 ± 60 kpc

Ann wrote:Very interesting! IC 10 is an intriguing galaxy, the only starburst galaxy of the Local Group.

However...
[...] IC 10 is about 2.2 million light-years away.

Ann

MargaritaMc wrote:

Ann wrote:Very interesting! IC 10 is an intriguing galaxy, the only starburst galaxy of the Local Group.

However...
[...] IC 10 is about 2.2 million light-years away.

Ann

Thanks for catching that error, Ann! Would it be a good idea for you to notify NASA/Chandra in the comment box on the press release page? It is rather a glaring "typo", isn't it?

MargaritaMc wrote:
There's a map of the local group here, showing IC 10
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Group#Map

I'd embed it, but I've forgotten how to do it on this board.

MargaritaMc wrote:@ Ann

@ Neufer - also (And I've looked at how you embedded the image)

neufer wrote:[...] the image & I are just good friends.