CHENNAI: The Indian Space Research Organization has released an image of a star cluster from a faded dwarf asymmetrical galaxy - Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte or WLM - that is located three million light years away.

The image was captured by Astrosat, which is India's first keen space observatory launched two years back.

Shot by scientists from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (Bengaluru), the picture, with clusters of stars seen in blue and yellow dots, has been put up on Isro's website .

Scientist Annapurni Subramaniam from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru and her student Chayan Mondal used the ultraviolet imaging telescope onboard the Astrosat to image a younger star clusters in WLM.

They wanted to do study and understand how this minute galaxy managed to form new stars exceptionally efficiently, in spite of having low mass (thousand times less than Milky Way) and metallicity, which hinders forming of new stars.

Grippingly, the galaxy manages to form stars at a rate that is 12 times higher than our own Milky Way. Astronomers are still not confident as to how WLM does this.

The telescope of the multi-wavelength space observatory, which was launched in September 2015, captured the image of the star cluster of the galaxy located in the constellation Cetus.

"AstroSat Picture of the Month" is an initiative of the Public Outreach and Education Committee of the Astronomical Society of India and AstroSat Training

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