Although we still do not know if we are really the only intelligent life in the universe, we are certainly not alone in terms of galaxies. There are approximately 100 to 200 billion galaxies – healthy clouds, stars, gas and planets, all connected by gravity – rotate in the universe.
Now an international team of astronomers gets a better look at one that is not so far – in space – from our home galaxy Milky Way. Using data from the very large telescope of the European South Observatory in Chile, the team created an incredible detailed image of the sculpture galaxy (NGC 253). The team watches the 11 million light -years spiral galaxy in thousands of colors, which includes the glittering stars living in it. Image and its consequences are detailed in a study accepted for publication in the magazine Astronomy and astrophysicsS
“Galaxics are incredibly complex systems that we are still struggling to understand,” ESO co -author and astronomer said in a statement.
The galaxies themselves can reach hundreds of thousands of light years, making them extremely large. Despite their size, how they develop ultimately depends on what happens on a smaller scale.
“The galaxy sculptor is in a sweet place,” Congiu said. “It is close enough that we can solve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible details, but at the same time large enough that we can still see it as a whole system.”
This image shows the galaxy of the sculptor in a new light. This composition of false color shows specific wavelengths of light, released from hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur and oxygen. These elements exist in the gas form throughout the galaxy, but the mechanisms causing this gas to shine can vary throughout the galaxy. Rose light is a gas excited by the radiation of newborn stars, while the cone of white light in the center is caused by the leakage of gas from the black hole in the core of the galaxy. Credit: ESO/E. Congiu et al. ESO / E. Congiu et al.
Like Lego Bricks, the galaxy’s building blocks – accuracy, gas and stars – all emit different colors, and astronomers use different image filters to study and discover what is inside. Astronomers can detect the waves of light, released from the elements of hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur and oxygen through the galaxy. The more color shades are included in depicting a galaxy, the more we can understand its internal work. Conventional images usually accept the galaxy using a handful of colors, but this new sculpture card includes thousands of shades.
Researchers watch the galaxy sculptor for more than 50 hours with the tool for very single spectroscopic researchers (Muse) on VLT to create a detailed map. They then sewed over 100 exposures to cover the galaxy area, which is about 65,000 light -years.
“We can increase the scale to study individual regions where the stars are formed on almost the scale of individual stars, but we can also increase to study the galaxy as a whole,” says study co -author Catherine Crakel of Heidelberg University, Germany.
[ Related: Where do all those colors in space telescope images come from? ]
The pink light throughout the image is a gas excited by the radiation of newborn stars. The cone of white light in the center is due to the leakage of gas from the black hole in the core of the galaxy.
In the first analysis of the data, the team discovered approximately 500 planetary nebulae-regions of gas and dust were thrown by dying sunny stars.
The co-author of the study and PhD student Heidelberg Fabian Sheerman put this number of nebulae in the context: “Beyond our galactic neighborhood, we usually deal with less than 100 discoveries of the galaxy.”
Due to the various properties inside, planetary nebulae can be used as space markers for distance to their host galaxies.
“Finding planetary nebulae allows us to check the distance to the galaxy-critical information on which other studies of the galaxy depend,” added the co-author and the astronomer of the State University of Ohio Adam Leroy.
In future projects with this map, astronomers hope to explore how gas streams change their composition and form stars in all this large galaxy.
“How such small processes can have such a great influence on the galaxy whose whole size is thousands of times larger, is still a mystery,” Congiu said.