This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy IC 4709 located around 240 million light-years away in the southern constellation Telescopium. Hubble beautifully captures its faint halo and swirling disk filled with stars and dust bands. The compact region at its core might be the most remarkable sight. It holds an active galactic nucleus (AGN)...
The collision isn’t as bad as it sounds. Although there was star formation occurring before, collisions between galaxies can compress gas, improving the conditions needed for more stars to form. On the other hand, as Webb reveals, collisions also disperse a lot of gas, potentially depriving new stars of the material they need to form.
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The universe is a dynamic, ever-changing place where galaxies are dancing, merging together, and shifting appearance. Unfortunately, because these changes take millions or billions of years, telescopes can only provide snapshots, squeezed into a human lifetime. However, galaxies leave behind clues to their history and how they came to be. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace...
Meanwhile, the classification of “ring galaxy” is reserved for peculiar galaxies with a round ring of gas and star formation, much like spiral arms look, but completely disconnected from the galactic nucleus — or even without any visible nucleus! They’re thought to be formed in galactic collisions. Finally, there are the famous gravitational lenses, where the ring is...
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 5238, located 14.5 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. Its unexciting, blob-like appearance seems to resemble an oversized star cluster more than a classic image of a galaxy. Its lackluster appearance belies its complicated structure, which is the...
These images show evidence for an exhaust vent attached to a chimney releasing hot gas from a region around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, as reported in our latest press release. In the main image of this graphic, X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) have been combined with radio data from the MeerKAT telescope (red)...
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features NGC 3783, a bright barred spiral galaxy about 130 million light-years from Earth that also lends its name to the eponymous NGC 3783 galaxy group. Like galaxy clusters, galaxy groups are aggregates of gravitationally bound galaxies. Galaxy groups, however, are less massive and contain fewer members than...