On Monday, NASA released stunning new images of the two galaxies to kick off Galore Galaxy’s final week. Image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the elliptical galaxy NGC 541 and an unusual, star-forming irregular dwarf galaxy known as the Minkowski Object (bluish object at bottom left of NGC 541).
The Distinguished Space Observatory is monitoring Object Minkowski and NGC 541 to better understand how star formation occurs in this region, the types of star formation that occurs, and the characteristics of the jets that cause it, NASA wrote in a blog.
We start last week #GalaxiesGalore With stunning images of two galaxies: the elliptical galaxy NGC 541, and the irregular dwarf galaxy Minkowski Object glows blue near the low center. Minkowski objects 7.5 million years old: https://t.co/JHxmclBsUD pic.twitter.com/ydVgbCXdi1
– Hubble (@NASAHubble) 23 Mei 2022
Radio jets from NGC 541 likely led to star formation in Minkowski’s body, which is about 7.5 million years old and consists of about 20 million stars.
According to NASA, radio galaxies like NGC 541 are surrounded by halos of gas and/or debris from recent merging events, which may have triggered the galaxy’s radio activity. The jet stream becomes warm gas of moderate density around the galaxy and the shock compresses and heats the gas, activating or ionizing it.
When the ionized gas returns from a higher energy state to a lower energy state, the energy leaves the cloud in the form of radiation. When the clouds cool, they collapse and give rise to stars.
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