NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has given us some extraordinary sights of the universe since it went up in 1990. The latest comes from some Yale researchers – who used it to take pictures of a dying galaxy.
Yale graduate student William Cramer and his team turned the telescope on a gigantic cluster of galaxies called the Coma cluster.
“There’s hundreds and thousands of galaxies zooming around in close proximity with each other. And in these clusters, the space between galaxies, isn’t actually empty. No, actually it’s filled with gas.”
They found a galaxy in the Coma cluster that slammed headfirst into that gas. And as it did, all its own gas and the cosmic dust that makes up its stars was stripped away.
“It’s like the resistance felt by a boat moving up the stream. And the same thing happens to galaxies when they’re moving through clusters filled with gas.”
The Hubble Telescope’s picture shows a colorful and poignant scene – the last of the galaxy’s gas being ripped out from its center in a massive stream of star-stuff that’s twice the length of the Milky Way Galaxy.
“It’s a 200,000-light-year-long tail of gas that you can see is very narrow connected to the center of the galaxy. You’re really seeing this galaxy in the last stages of its lifecycle of producing stars.”
Cramer said this deathbed portrait can teach scientists a lot about a galaxy’s lifespan.
