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A rare find of a galaxy with a very rapid star formation at the center.




An international team of astronomers has discovered, by the help of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a gargantuan galaxy cluster with core bursting with new stars----an incredibly rare find. It was the first to show that gigantic galaxies at the centers of massive clusters can grow significantly by feeding off gas stolen from other galaxies.
Galaxy clusters are vast families of galaxies bounded together by gravity. For example, our own galaxy the Milky Way resides within a small galaxy group known as the Local Group, which itself is a member of the massive Laniakea super-cluster.
Galaxies at the center of the cluster are usually old, made of stellar fossils---old, red or dead stars. However, astronomers have now discovered a giant galaxy at the heart of a cluster named SpARCS1049+56 that seems to bucking the trend, instead forming new stars at an incredible rate.
Tracy Webb of McGill University explained that the giant galaxy at the centre of this cluster is furiously making new stars after merging with a smaller galaxy.
The SpARCS1049+56 is so far away that its light took 9.8 billion years to reach earth. It houses at least 27 galaxies and has combined mass of 400 trillion Suns, how I wish our technology could reach us in these awesome places. It is a truly unique cluster in one aspect----its vibrant heart of new stars. The cluster brightest galaxy is rapidly spitting out 800 new stars per year. The Milky Way forms 2 stars per year at most.
The galaxy was initially discovered using NASA’s Spitzer Telescope and Canada-France Telescope, located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii and confirmed using the W.M Keck Observatory. Follow up was done by Hubble Space Telescope allowing the astronomers to explore galaxy’s activities.
·         The Spitzer data showed a truly enormous amount of star formation in the heart of the cluster, something which is rarely seen before.
Spitzer picks up infrared light, so it can detect the warm glow of hidden, dusty regions of star birth. Follow up studies with Hubble in visible light helped to pinpoint what was fueling the new star formation.
It appears that a smaller galaxy has recently emerged with the monster in the middle of the cluster, lending its gas to larger galaxy and igniting a furious episode of new star-birth.
The new discovery is one of the first known cases of a wet merger at the core of a galaxy cluster. Hubble recently found a galaxy containing a wet merger but it wasn’t forming stars vigorously.
The astronomers now aims how common this type of growth mechanism is in galaxy clusters-----it may even represent an early time in our own Universe when messy eating was the norm.

Ed Tesla

Ed Tesla

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