Saturday, July 27, 2024

A blocked galaxy reveals itself to our eyes

Date:

The new image from the Hubble Space Telescope is full of magic and mystery. Shown in its entirety Galaxy NGC 4731Which is located within the Virgo constellation, 43 million light-years away.

Recently, Hubble has provided us with other stunning images of galaxies, but NGC 4731 is very special from a morphological point of view.

Actually it is one Barred spiral galaxy Its structure is a resultAlignment of millions of stars and solar systemsWhich revolves around the center of the galaxy, forming a dense region of matter.

In fact, these types of galaxies are The most numerous in the universe (about 60%), and they are more than simple spiral galaxies similar to the Milky Way. However, there are few barred galaxies that can be seen as clearly as NGC 4731, which is why NASA and ESA engineers who coordinate the Hubble systems decided to devote some attention to this galaxy.

As you can see in images posted on the web, NGC 4731’s spiral arms are extending Far beyond the edge of the image Close-up image taken by Hubble. Astronomers believe that the long arms of this galaxy are a result of… Gravitational interactions With other nearby galaxies, which over time have become so close to NGC 4731 that they are almost in danger of merging.

On the other hand, interaction between galaxies is a fairly widespread phenomenon in the universe. You only have to look at other images taken by Hubble in the past to understand how these giants live such turbulent lives.

See also  Lombardy, sit-in against healthcare reform: "They're still doing privatization, like the supermarket. They haven't learned anything from these two years"

Even the Milky Way is destined to collide with another galaxy, andromeda, But this catastrophic event will happen in a long time: 4.5 billion years.

Popular

More like this