Spiral galaxy ESO 420-G013 photographed by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA/Catholic University of America)
[The Epoch Times, February 05, 2024](Epoch Times reporter Chen Juncun reported) NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope photographed a spiral galaxy 50 million light-years away , it looks like a baseball being thrown into the depths of space.
NASA shared this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on January 30. It shows spiral galaxy ESO 420-G013 face-up. Dark dust lanes are clearly visible against the backdrop of the galaxy’s many stars.
ESO 420-G013 is also classified as a Seyfert galaxy. This type of galaxy is very active and accounts for about 10% of all galaxies in the universe. They are usually spiral galaxies and have very bright cores, the result of massive amounts of radiation released from material accreting by the supermassive black hole at their center.
The cores of these “active galaxies” are brightest when one looks at light outside the visible spectrum. Galaxies with such active cores are usually very bright, but the galaxies themselves are overwhelmed by the light of the core and cannot be seen. Seyfert galaxies are very special because their galaxies themselves are also visible.
In the case of ESO 420-G013, one can admire the galaxy’s near-perfect disk, relatively bright core, and swirling filaments of dark dust.
Astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe ESO 420-G013 in order to study luminous infrared galaxies. Bright infrared galaxies are very bright in the infrared part of the spectrum. Interactions between galaxies trigger new star formation regions in bright infrared galaxies, causing them to glow highly in infrared light.
NASA also shared another image of a blue compact galaxy taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on February 2. This galaxy was named ESO 185-IG013.
The blue dense galaxy ESO 185-IG013 captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA)
Blue dense galaxies are nearby galaxies that show intense bursts of star formation. They appear unusually blue in visible light, distinguishing them from other highly starburst galaxies that emit more infrared light.
Astrophysicists study blue dense galaxies because they are equivalent to relatively nearby galaxies in the early stages of the universe and can help scientists understand the formation and evolution of galaxies that may have occurred billions of years ago.
The galaxy ESO 185-IG013 contains hundreds of young star clusters, many of which are less than 100 million years old. Many star clusters are only 3.5 million years old, which is a baby compared to the time scale of the universe.
Scientists predict that many of these youngest star clusters won’t last long, as young star clusters tend to die after expelling too much gas. The large number of young star clusters suggests that the galaxy has undergone recent collisions and mergers. This merger provided massive amounts of fuel for star formation, a process that continues to this day.
The combined mass of all the stars in this galaxy exceeds the mass of the Sun by 7 billion times. The galaxy is about 260 million light-years away from Earth.
Editor in charge: Ye Ziwei#
