NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has caught a glimpse of fireworks of sort in space as a small, nearby galaxy pulled off a spectacular stellar firework display.
Advertisement
The observations also showed signs of strong stellar winds and supernova explosions, which have blasted holes through LEDA 36252’s head and created multiple cavities.
The astronomers suggest that the fireworks started up when Kiso 5639 encountered a huge filament of intergalactic gas, and that other parts of the galaxy may light up like the skies on the Fourth of July as they spin through the same filament.
According to a report in Tech Times by James Maynard, “The Wide Field Planetary Camera aboard the Hubble, fitted with a series of filters, was utilized to capture the new image”.
When they were discovered in the 1990s, it was thought that the heads of tadpole galaxies were caused by collisions with other galaxies. “The current thinking is that galaxies in the early universe grow from accreting gas from the surrounding neighborhood”.
Lead researcher Debra Elmegreen of Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York said, “I think Kiso 5639 is a attractive, up-close example of what must have been common long ago”.
The bright gas collected in the galaxy’s head contains fewer heavy elements, or metals, such as carbon and oxygen, than the rest of the tail. The image reportedly shows a galaxy called Kiso 5639 lighted up on one side by a star birth firestorm and a star studded tail trails behind.
The glowing head of Kiso 5639 is made up of dozens of clusters of stars. Star clusters in the rest of Kiso 5639 are between several million to a few billion years old.
It has taken billions of years to develop, having drifted through a “desert” of space with little gas for most of its existence.
What triggered the starburst in such a backwater galaxy?
Debra Elmegreen expects that other parts of the galaxy might join in the fireworks-making star formations in the future, explaining that since galaxies rotate, Kiso 5639 might come into contact with another filament, sparking off another round of these star births.
What’s special about Kiso 5639?
However, a study published in The Astrophysical Journal describing LEDA 36252 revealed some unexpected results.
The Universe is a swirling pool of galaxies moving through the emptiness of space.
Advertisement
Whilst spiral and elliptical galaxies are abundant in space, the tadpole galaxies are extremely rare and unusual – in a sample of 10,000 galaxies within a local universe only 20 will be tadpole galaxies. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations.
