by If you happen to be in a dark and clear summer night in the southern hemisphere with binoculars and a good view of the night sky, you may be able to recognize the sculpture galaxy. And if their eyes were prisms that could separate the light into the thousands of colors that invent it and then congratulations: after the rigid hours, they could have reproduced the latest picture of one of the next neighbors for our Milky Way.
This is not just another breathtaking picture of a nearby galaxy. Since it reveals the type of light that comes from every place in the galaxy, this picture of the sculptor galaxy is a treasury of information that astronomers around the world cannot wait to deal.
As astronomy Ph.D. Student at Ohio State University, I (Rebecca), am one of the happy people who can stare at this picture for hours every day, together with my consultant (Adam) and discovers a meaning behind the beauty that everyone can appreciate.
Creating the picture
The sculpture galaxy is 11 million light years from the Milky Way. This may sound unfathomable, but it actually makes sculptors one of the closest galaxies on earth.
For this reason, sculptor was the primary goal for many observations. In 2022, an international team of scientists with the spectroscopic Explorer from Multi-Units, Muse, observed about the very large telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile and published the data publicly in June.
Most astronomical observations either get a picture of a single light color – for example red or blue – or a spectrum that divides the light from the entire galaxy into many different colors.
Muse creates both conveniently and produces a spectrum in any place where it is observed. An observation creates thousands of images in thousands of colors, each tracking the critical components, from which the galaxy consists: stars, dust and gas.
It may look like just an image, but this picture of the sculptor actually exists over 100 individual observations and 8 million individual spectra, which have collapsed carefully to reveal millions of stars in a coherent galaxy.
Scientific importance
The light connected to the stars in the sculptor is colored white, and the gas consisting of invited particles is colored red. The greatest concentration of both can be found in the spiral arms. In the center of the galaxy there is a nuclear -dying: a region of extreme star development that blows material out of the galaxy.
There is even information without light. Dust hides light from behind, which creates a shadow effect that is referred to as dust traces. The pursuit of these dust traces shows the cold, dense material that exists between stars. Scientists believe that this dark material is the fuel that will form the next generation of stars.
Complex gaseous fog (red) surround young and massive stars (white) in this zoom of a group of stamina regions. European South Observatory/VLT/Muse
There is a lot to see in this picture, but the topic of my work and what I find most interesting is this gas in red. In these star-forming regions, young and massive stars arouse the gas around them, which then shines with a certain color to uncover the chemical make-up and the physical conditions of the gas.
This picture represents one of the first time that astronomers have received pictures of thousands of stubborn regions in this impressive detail level. A component of the research of our team uses Muse’s data to understand how these regions are structured and how they interact with the surrounding galaxy.
Astronomers can meticulously put together this image in order to learn more about the formation and development of stars in the entire universe.
This article will be released from the conversation, a non -profit, independent news organization that brings you facts and trustworthy analyzes to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Rebecca McClain, The Ohio State University and Adam Leroy, The Ohio State University
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Rebecca McClain receives funds from the National Science Foundation.
Adam Leroy receives a financing from the NASA/space telescope -science institute that supports research in connection with the survey discussed in this article under NGC 253.
