IC 1613

A dust-poor Local Group neighbor

IC 1613 lies just over 2.3 million light-years away. Its low dust content and pulsating variable stars help astronomers measure its distance; this route uses a rounded 2.3 million light-years.

The moving dashes represent light travelling between galaxies. Their speed and the spacing of the galaxy icons are illustrative.

≈ 13,000 light-years across.

This approximate luminous extent is calculated from the SEDS catalog’s 20-arcminute angular span and the rounded 2.3-million-light-year distance from ESO. The small-angle estimate is about 13,400 light-years, rounded here to 13,000. It is not a hard edge.

The overview compares this galaxy with a rounded Milky Way reference of 100,000 light-years on one linear scale. These luminous extents do not represent sharp physical edges.

Stars and gas in an irregular cloud

IC 1613 has an uneven stellar body with bright gas regions and very little obscuring dust. The Stars and Gas controls highlight these components schematically. Its Cepheid and RR Lyrae variables provide clues to distance through their pulsations.

Select Stars or Gas to highlight the irregular stellar body and star-forming clouds. Pulsing light is illustrative, not a physical change in brightness.

A small part of the Local Group

IC 1613 belongs to the same Local Group as the Milky Way and Andromeda. Its relatively clear view of individual stars makes this small galaxy useful for understanding stellar populations and the cosmic distance scale.