Barnard’s Galaxy, or NGC 6822, is a barred irregular galaxy within our Local Group, located at about 1.5 million light-years; it is the closest non-satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. It features an abundance of blue hot young stars and several star forming regions, here visible as the pinkish “bubbles” around it, which are unusually numerous for the galaxy size – Barnard’s galaxy has spent most of its time in isolation but it became quite close to our Milky Way and gravitational interaction is believed to have triggered all this star formation.
