 Discovered by William Herschel on 9 September 1798, this well-studied galaxy has a diameter of approximately 40,000 light-years
, about one-third of the Milky Way's size, and it contains roughly half the number of stars as the Milky Way.It is heavily obscured by interstellar matter due to its location close to the galactic plane of the Milky Way, with a dimming of ~1.5 magnitudes.Due to its prodigious star formation it has been classified as an active starburst galaxy.