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Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Observes a Peculiar… Missions Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Observes a Peculiar Galaxy Shape
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy, NGC 4694. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the galaxy, NGC 4694. Most galaxies fall into one of two basic types. Spiral galaxies are young and energetic, filled with the gas needed to form new stars and sporting spiral arms that host these hot, bright youths. Elliptical galaxies have a much more pedestrian look, and their light comes from a uniform population of older and redder stars. But some galaxies require in-depth study to classify their type: such is the case with NGC 4694, a galaxy located 54 million light-years from Earth in the Virgo galaxy cluster.
NGC 4694 has a smooth-looking, armless disk which — like an elliptical galaxy — is nearly devoid of star formation. Yet its stellar population is still relatively young and new stars are actively forming in its core, powering its bright center and giving it a markedly different stellar profile from that of a classic elliptical. Although elliptical galaxies often host significant quantities of dust, they generally do not hold the fuel needed to form new stars. NGC 4694 is filled with the hydrogen gas and dust normally seen in a young and sprightly spiral, and a huge cloud of invisible hydrogen gas surrounds the galaxy.
As this Hubble image reveals, NGC 4694’s dust forms chaotic structures that indicate some kind of disturbance. It turns out that the cloud of hydrogen gas around NGC 4694 forms a long bridge to a nearby, faint dwarf galaxy named VCC 2062. The two galaxies have undergone a violent collision, and the larger NGC 4694 is accreting gas from the smaller galaxy. This collision helped give NGC 4694 its peculiar shape and star-forming activity that classify it as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies lack the unmistakable arms of a spiral, but still have a central bulge and disk. They also hold more star-forming gas than an elliptical galaxy. Some galaxies, like NGC 4694, aren’t as easy to categorize as one type or the other. It takes a bit more digging to reveal their true nature, and thanks to Hubble, we have the ability to uncover their secrets.
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Last Updated Oct 04, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Lenticular Galaxies Missions The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Captures Steller… Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Captures Steller Nurseries in a Majestic Spiral
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy IC 1954. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy IC 1954, located 45 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Horologium. It sports a glowing bar in its core, majestically winding spiral arms, and clouds of dark dust across it. Numerous glowing, pink spots across the disc of the galaxy are H-alpha regions that offer astronomers a view of star-forming nebulae, which are prominent emitters of red, H-alpha light. Some astronomers theorize that the galaxy’s ‘bar’ is actually an energetic star-forming region that just happens to lie over the galactic center.
The data featured in this image come from a program that extends the cooperation among multiple observatories: Hubble, the infrared James Webb Space Telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a ground-based radio telescope. By surveying IC 1954 and over 50 other nearby galaxies in radio, infrared, optical, and ultraviolet light, astronomers aim to fully trace and reconstruct the path matter takes through stars, mapping the interstellar gas and dust in each galaxy. Hubble’s observing capabilities form an important part of this survey: it can capture younger stars and star clusters when they are brightest at ultraviolet and optical wavelengths, and its H-alpha filter effectively tracks emission from nebulae. The resulting dataset will form a treasure trove of research on the evolution of stars in galaxies, which Webb can build upon as it continues its science operations into the future.
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Last Updated Sep 26, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Galaxies Hubble Space Telescope Spiral Galaxies Stars Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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4 Min Read In Odd Galaxy, NASA’s Webb Finds Potential Missing Link to First Stars
What appears as a faint dot in this James Webb Space Telescope image may actually be a groundbreaking discovery. Full image and details below. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Alex Cameron (Oxford) Looking deep into the early universe with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have found something unprecedented: a galaxy with an odd light signature, which they attribute to its gas outshining its stars. Found approximately one billion years after the big bang, galaxy GS-NDG-9422 (9422) may be a missing-link phase of galactic evolution between the universe’s first stars and familiar, well-established galaxies.
Image A: Galaxy GS-NDG-9422 (NIRCam Image)
What appears as a faint dot in this James Webb Space Telescope image may actually be a groundbreaking discovery. Detailed information on galaxy GS-NDG-9422, captured by Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument, indicates that the light we see in this image is coming from the galaxy’s hot gas, rather than its stars. Astronomers think that the galaxy’s stars are so extremely hot (more than 140,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or 80,000 degrees Celsius) that they are heating up the nebular gas, allowing it to shine even brighter than the stars themselves. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Alex Cameron (Oxford) “My first thought in looking at the galaxy’s spectrum was, ‘that’s weird,’ which is exactly what the Webb telescope was designed to reveal: totally new phenomena in the early universe that will help us understand how the cosmic story began,” said lead researcher Alex Cameron of the University of Oxford.
Cameron reached out to colleague Harley Katz, a theorist, to discuss the strange data. Working together, their team found that computer models of cosmic gas clouds heated by very hot, massive stars, to an extent that the gas shone brighter than the stars, was nearly a perfect match to Webb’s observations.
“It looks like these stars must be much hotter and more massive than what we see in the local universe, which makes sense because the early universe was a very different environment,” said Katz, of Oxford and the University of Chicago.
In the local universe, typical hot, massive stars have a temperature ranging between 70,000 to 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit (40,000 to 50,000 degrees Celsius). According to the team, galaxy 9422 has stars hotter than 140,000 degrees Fahrenheit (80,000 degrees Celsius).
The research team suspects that the galaxy is in the midst of a brief phase of intense star formation inside a cloud of dense gas that is producing a large number of massive, hot stars. The gas cloud is being hit with so many photons of light from the stars that it is shining extremely brightly.
Image B: Galaxy GS-NDG-9422 Spectrum (NIRSpec)
This comparison of the data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope with a computer model prediction highlights the same sloping feature that first caught the eye of astronomer Alex Cameron, lead researcher of a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The bottom graphic compares what astronomers would expect to see in a “typical” galaxy, with its light coming predominantly from stars (white line), with a theoretical model of light coming from hot nebular gas, outshining stars (yellow line). The model comes from Cameron’s collaborator, theoretical astronomer Harley Katz, and together they realized the similarities between the model and Cameron’s Webb observations of galaxy GS-NDG-9422 (top). The unusual downturn of the galaxy’s spectrum, leading to an exaggerated spike in neutral hydrogen, is nearly a perfect match to Katz’s model of a spectrum dominated by super-heated gas.
While this is still only one example, Cameron, Katz, and their fellow researchers think the conclusion that galaxy GS-NDG-9422 is dominated by nebular light, rather than starlight, is their strongest jumping-off point for future investigation. They are looking for more galaxies around the same one-billion-year mark in the universe’s history, hoping to find more examples of a new type of galaxy, a missing link in the history of galactic evolution.
NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI) In addition to its novelty, nebular gas outshining stars is intriguing because it is something predicted in the environments of the universe’s first generation of stars, which astronomers classify as Population III stars.
“We know that this galaxy does not have Population III stars, because the Webb data shows too much chemical complexity. However, its stars are different than what we are familiar with – the exotic stars in this galaxy could be a guide for understanding how galaxies transitioned from primordial stars to the types of galaxies we already know,” said Katz.
At this point, galaxy 9422 is one example of this phase of galaxy development, so there are still many questions to be answered. Are these conditions common in galaxies at this time period, or a rare occurrence? What more can they tell us about even earlier phases of galaxy evolution? Cameron, Katz, and their research colleagues are actively identifying more galaxies to add to this population to better understand what was happening in the universe within the first billion years after the big bang.
“It’s a very exciting time, to be able to use the Webb telescope to explore this time in the universe that was once inaccessible,” Cameron said. “We are just at the beginning of new discoveries and understanding.”
The research paper is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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Media Contacts
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu, Leah Ramsay – lramsay@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Related Information
Read more: “What Were the First Stars Like?”
Watch: “Massive Stars: Engines of Creation”
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Last Updated Sep 24, 2024 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
Astrophysics Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Science & Research Stars The Universe View the full article
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Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Lights the Way with New… Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Lights the Way with New Multiwavelength Galaxy View
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the galaxy NGC 1559. ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, W. Yuan, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, A. Riess, K. Takáts, D. de Martin & M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble) The magnificent galaxy featured in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is NGC 1559. It is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Reticulum, approximately 35 million light-years from Earth. The brilliant light captured in the current image offers a wealth of information.
This picture is composed of a whopping ten different Hubble images, each filtered to collect light from a specific wavelength or range of wavelengths. It spans Hubble’s sensitivity to light, from ultraviolet through visible light and into the near-infrared spectrum. Capturing such a wide range of wavelengths allows astronomers to study information about many different astrophysical processes in the galaxy: one notable example is the red 656-nanometer filter used here. Ionized hydrogen atoms emit light at this particular wavelength, called H-alpha emission. New stars forming in a molecular cloud, made mostly of hydrogen gas, emit copious amounts of ultraviolet light that the cloud absorbs, ionizing the hydrogen gas causing it to glow with H-alpha light. Using Hubble’s filters to detect only H-alpha light provides a reliable way to detect areas of star formation (called H II regions). These regions are visible in this image as bright red and pink patches filling NGC 1559’s spiral arms.
These ten images come from six different Hubble observing programs, spanning from 2009 all the way up to 2024. Teams of astronomers from around the world proposed these programs with a variety of scientific goals, ranging from studying ionized gas and star formation, to following up on a supernova, to tracking variable stars as a contribution to calculating the Hubble constant. The data from all of these observations lives in the Hubble archive, available for anyone to use. This archive is regularly used to generate new science, but also to create spectacular images like this one! This new image of NGC 1559 is a reminder of the incredible opportunities that Hubble provided and continues to provide.
Along with Hubble’s observations, astronomers are using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to continue researching this galaxy. This Webb image from February showcases the galaxy in near- and mid-infrared light.
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Last Updated Sep 19, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Spiral Galaxies The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Science Behind the Discoveries
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By NASA
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Xiamen Univ./C. Ge; Optical: DESI collaboration; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have found a galaxy cluster has two streams of superheated gas crossing one another. This result shows that crossing the streams may lead to the creation of new structure.
Researchers have discovered an enormous, comet-like tail of hot gas — spanning over 1.6 million light-years long — trailing behind a galaxy within the galaxy cluster called Zwicky 8338 (Z8338 for short). This tail, spawned as the galaxy had some of its gas stripped off by the hot gas it is hurtling through, has split into two streams.
This is the second pair of tails trailing behind a galaxy in this system. Previously, astronomers discovered a shorter pair of tails from a different galaxy near this latest one. This newer and longer set of tails was only seen because of a deeper observation with Chandra that revealed the fainter X-rays.
Researchers have discovered a second pair of tails trailing behind a galaxy in this cluster. Previously, astronomers discovered a shorter pair of tails from a different galaxy close to this latest one. This newer and longer set of tails was only seen because of a deeper observation with Chandra that revealed the fainter X-rays that have been shown in the optical data. These tails span for over a million light-years and help determine the evolution of the galaxy cluster.X-ray: NASA/CXC/Xiamen Univ./C. Ge; Optical: DESI collaboration; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk Astronomers now have evidence that these streams trailing behind the speeding galaxies have crossed one another. Z8338 is a chaotic landscape of galaxies, superheated gas, and shock waves (akin to sonic booms created by supersonic jets) in one relatively small region of space. These galaxies are in motion because they were part of two galaxy clusters that collided with each other to create Z8338.
This new composite image shows this spectacle. X-rays from Chandra (represented in purple) outline the multimillion-degree gas that outweighs all of the galaxies in the cluster. The Chandra data also shows where this gas has been jettisoned behind the moving galaxies. Meanwhile an optical image from the Dark Energy Survey from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile shows the individual galaxies peppered throughout the same field of view.
The original gas tail discovered in Z8338 is about 800,000 light-years long and is seen as vertical in this image (see the labeled version). The researchers think the gas in this tail is being stripped away from a large galaxy as it travels through the galaxy cluster. The head of the tail is a cloud of relatively cool gas about 100,000 light-years away from the galaxy it was stripped from. This tail is also separated into two parts.
The team proposes that the detachment of the tail from the large galaxy may have been caused by the passage of the other, longer tail. Under this scenario, the tail detached from the galaxy because of the crossing of the streams.
The results give useful information about the detachment and destruction of clouds of cooler gas like those seen in the head of the detached tail. This work shows that the cloud can survive for at least 30 million years after it is detached. During that time, a new generation of stars and planets may form within it.
The Z8338 galaxy cluster and its jumble of galactic streams are located about 670 million light-years from Earth. A paper describing these results appeared in the Aug. 8, 2023, issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is available online at: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/525/1/1365/7239302.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
Visual Description:
This release features a composite image of two pairs of hot gas tails found inside a single galaxy cluster. The image is presented both labeled and unlabeled, with color-coded ovals encircling the hot gas tails.
In both the labeled and unlabeled versions of the image, mottled purple gas speckles a region of space dotted with distant flecks of red and white. Also present in this region of space are several glowing golden dots. These dots are individual galaxies that together form the cluster Zwicky 8338.
To our right of center is a glowing golden galaxy with a mottled V shaped cloud of purple above it. Yellow labels identify the two arms of the V as tails trailing behind the hurtling galaxy below.
To our left of center is another golden galaxy, this one surrounded by purple gas. Behind it, opening toward our right in the shape of a widening V lying on its side, are two more mottled purple clouds. Labeled in white, these newly-discovered gas tails are even larger than the previously discovered tails labeled in yellow. These tails, which overlap with the galaxy on our right, are over 1.6 million light-years long.
News Media Contact
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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