Pan on NGC 4485

This video pans over NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations of the irregular galaxy NGC 4485, located about 30 million light-years from Earth. The irregular appearance of the galaxy is the result of a close encounter with another galaxy — NGC 4490.

The pan cleary shows a stream of gas and stars emerging from the galaxy. The stream is connecting both galaxies, which are currently moving away from each other, and is made up of bright knots and huge pockets of gassy regions, as well as enormous regions of star formation in which young, massive, blue stars are born.