NGC 6822 and its rich neighborhood

A new color image of the nearby irregular galaxy NGC6822 shows a myriad of hot blue massive stars and several famous nebulae in impressive detail. NGC6822 is located approximately 1.6 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Sagittarius. A member of the Milky Way galaxy's Local Group, it was discovered by E.E. Barnard in the early 1880s. Edwin P. Hubble conducted the first detailed investigation of the galaxy in 1925, using the new 100-inch telescope on Mount Wilson. An analysis of these plates by then-graduate student Susan E. Kayser in 1966 has remained the most complete study of this galaxy until now. New images of NGC6822 in eight filters were taken using the National Science Foundation's Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) near La Serena, Chile, by CTIO staff members Knut Olsen and Chris Smith. They, along with Phil Massey [PI, Lowell Observatory], Paul Hodge (Univ Washington), Shay Holmes (Lowell Obs), George Jacoby (WIYN), Nichole King (STScI), and Abi Saha (NOAO) comprise the "Local Group Galaxies Survey Team". This color representation was put together by Travis Rector (NRAO), by combining images taken in seven of the eight filters: U (violet), B (blue), V (green), R (orange), I (red), Hydrogen-Alpha (red) and Oxygen [OIII] (blue). The images were obtained as part of the NOAO Local Group Galaxies Survey, one of 13 active survey projects fostered by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. Further details can be found at http://www.lowell.edu/users/massey/lgsurvey.html.