Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Tranquil Galaxy With Petals Shows Clues To A Violent Past

Tranquil Galaxy With Petals Shows Clues To A Violent Past:
PGC 6240, a petal-like galaxy that probably was altered by a galactic merger. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA with acknowledgement to Judy Schmidt
PGC 6240, a petal-like galaxy that probably was altered by a galactic merger. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA with acknowledgement to Judy Schmidt
Across the universe, some 350 million light-years away, lies a galaxy that looks like it has white rose petals. Don’t let the tranquil appearance of PGC 6240 fool you as to its past, however. This galaxy in Hydrus (The Water Snake) likely was dramatically altered by a galactic merger.
There’s a bunch of evidence pointing to this. There are “star shells” of globular clusters around the galaxy, but they’re distributed unevenly — some are close in, some are way out in the distant suburbs. Also, “several wisps of material have been thrown so far that they appear to be almost detached from the galaxy altogether,” stated the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre.
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© Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, 2013. |Permalink |No comment |
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