The Cocoon Galaxy

This is NGC 4490, also known as the Cocoon Galaxy. Its distance of 25 million lightyears away from Earth makes it difficult to tease out all the details, but using my largest scope I was able to pull out some dark dust lanes and many pink areas of intense star formation. It is in a tidal dance with a smaller companion galaxy (NGC 4485) seen in my image as well, and their interactions have made it a “starburst galaxy” with up to 30x the rate of star formation in our own Milky Way.

I hope you like it and have a great day!

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