View allAll Photos Tagged ellipticalgalaxy
Messier 60 or M60, also known as NGC 4649, is an elliptical galaxy approximately 57 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. Together with NGC 4647, a spiral galaxy, it forms a pair known as Arp 116.
The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies is a catalog of peculiar galaxies produced by Halton Arp in 1966. A total of 338 galaxies are presented in the atlas, which was originally published in 1966 by the California Institute of Technology. The primary goal of the catalog was to present photographs of examples of the different kinds of peculiar structures found among galaxies.
A 2012 Hubble image of this galaxy seems to confirm they are indeed interacting with each other.
Tech Specs: Sky Watcher Esprit 120ED, ZWO ASI071mc-Pro running at 0C, Celestron CGEM-DX Mount Pier Mounted, ZWO EAF, 95 x 60 second exposures with dark/flat frames, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope, controlled with a ZWO ASIAir Pro. Image date: May 31, 2021. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle 4 Zone).
The Andromeda Galaxy, this is my first light on it using the Sky-Watcher APO. The Andromeda Galaxy is also designated Messier 31 (M31) and is the nearest major galaxy to out Milky Way, which it happens to be on a collision course with! Also pictured are the elliptical galaxies Messier 110 (M110) to the upper left of Andromeda and Messier 32 (M32) the large white dot just to the right of the center of Andromeda.
Tech Specs: Sky-Watcher Esprit 120mm ED Triplet APO Refractor, Celestron CGEM-DX mount, Canon 6D stock camera, ISO 3200, 75 x 60 second exposures with dark/bias frames, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope. Image date: October 30, 2018. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...
A wide-field view of the Fornax Cluster, a cluster of Galaxies 62 million light-years from Earth. It is the second richest Galaxy cluster within 100 million light-years, after the considerably larger Virgo Cluster. It lies primarily in the Southern constellation Fornax, with its boundaries partially crossing into the constellation of Eridanus. The Galaxy Cluster covers an area of sky about 6° of arc across (and is a part of larger Fornax Wall).
NGC 1365 is the prominent Galaxy on the right, also known as "The Great Barred Spiral Galaxy", and on the left of the image NGC 1399 is the large Elliptical Galaxy.
A few quotes:
"There is an odd mannequin shape that is presented by the distribution of galaxies. This work has been done mainly by Margaret Geller with her collaborator John Huchra at Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution. It's a little like soap bubbles in a bathtub or dishwashing detergent. The galaxies are on the surfaces of the bubbles. The insides of the bubbles seem to have no galaxies in them at all." - Carl Sagan - Cosmos - The Edge of Forever (S01E10).
The size and age of the cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home, the Earth." - Carl Sagan - Cosmos - The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean (S01E01).
About this image:
Imaged in LRGB over several sessions in October 2019 from the Southern Hemisphere.
Image Acquisition & Plate Solving:
SGP Mosaic and Framing Wizard.
PlaneWave PlateSolve 2 via SGP.
Integration time:
22 hours.
Processing:
Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,
and finished in Photoshop.
Astrometry info:
Center RA, Dec: 53.874, -35.727
Center RA, hms: 03h 35m 29.728s
Center Dec, dms: -35° 43' 37.706"
Size: 90.9 x 58.9 arcmin.
Radius: 0.903 deg.
Pixel scale: 3.41 arcsec/pixel.
Orientation: Up is 44.4 degrees E of N.
View an Aannotated Sky Chart for this image.
View this image in the WorldWideTelescope.
&creditsUrl=&ra=53.514137&dec=-35.757465&x=1043.1&y=711.1&rotation=135.65&thumb=http://nova.astrometry.net/image/7225988){kind=link}
Also see:
The Markarian's Chain of Galaxies.
This image is part of the Legacy Series.
Photo usage and Copyright:
Medium-resolution photograph licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Terms (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). For High-resolution Royalty Free (RF) licensing, contact me via my site: Contact.
Martin
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The Hickson 93 Galaxy Group, also referred to as Arp 99, can be found in the constellation Pegasus. From the Atlas of Compact Groups of Galaxies (1993), Paul Hickson stated, “This group (Arp 99) consists of an accordant quartet plus a fainter high-redshift galaxy. The bright spiral galaxy has two long plumes which result from tidal interaction. It is a radio and infrared source. The bright elliptical galaxy is also a radio source.”
This grouping is about 265 million light years away, five main galaxies are shown in the image, but only four are thought to be gravitationally bound and strongly interacting. You can see in the image how NGC 7549 is distorted by gravity, slowly pulling away strings of stars and gas.
The particulars on the galaxies shown are:
NGC 7549, magnitude 13.8, barred spiral galaxy.
NGC 7550, magnitude 13.6, lenticular galaxy.
NGC 7547, magnitude 14.7, barred spiral galaxy.
NGC 7553, magnitude 15.3, elliptical galaxy.
NGC 7558, magnitude 16.0, spiral galaxy.
Tech Specs: This image is composed of 192 x 15 second images at ISO 5,000 with 10 x 15 second darks and 10 x 1/4000 second bias frames using a Meade LX90 12” telescope and Canon 6D camera mounted on a Celestron CGEM-DX mount. Imaging was done on November 6, 2016 and November 22, 2016 from Weatherly, Pennsylvania.
Online resources:
Deep Sky Object Browser (dso-browser.com/deep-sky/8761/ngc-7550/galaxy)
FaintGalaxy.com (www.faintgalaxy.com/ngc7550.htm)
338arps.com (338arps.com/arp_99.htm)
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), located 210,000 light-years away, is one of the most dynamic and intricately detailed star-forming regions in space. At the center of the region is a brilliant star cluster called NGC 346. A dramatic structure of arched, ragged filaments with a distinct ridge surrounds the cluster.
A torrent of radiation from the cluster's hot stars eats into denser areas creating a fantasy sculpture of dust and gas. The dark, intricately beaded edge of the ridge, seen in silhouette by Hubble, is particularly dramatic. It contains several small dust globules that point back towards the central cluster, like windsocks caught in a gale.
Energetic outflows and radiation from hot young stars are eroding the dense outer portions of the star-forming region, formally known as N66, exposing new stellar nurseries. The diffuse fringes of the nebula prevent the energetic outflows from streaming directly away from the cluster, leaving instead a trail of filaments marking the swirling path of the outflows.
The NGC 346 cluster at the center of this image from the Hubble Space Telescope contains dozens of hot, blue, high-mass stars, more than half of the known high-mass stars in the entire SMC galaxy. A myriad of smaller, compact clusters is also visible throughout the region.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA and A. Nota (STScI/ESA)
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #galaxy #spiralgalaxy
Scientists often use the combined power of multiple telescopes to reveal the secrets of the Universe – and this image is a prime example of when this technique is strikingly effective.
The yellow-hued object at the centre of the frame is an elliptical galaxy known as Hercules A, seen by the Earth-orbiting NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In normal light, an observer would only see this object floating in the inky blackness of space.
However, view Hercules A with a radio telescope, and the entire region is completely transformed. Stunning red–pink jets of material can be seen billowing outwards from the galaxy – jets that are completely invisible in visible light. They are shown here as seen by the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio observatory in New Mexico, USA. These radio observations were combined with the Hubble visible-light data obtained with the Wide Field Camera 3 to create this striking composite.
The two jets are composed of hot, high-energy plasma that has been flung from the centre of Hercules A, a process that is driven by a supermassive black hole lurking at the galaxy’s heart. This black hole is some 2.5 billion times the mass of the Sun, and around a thousand times more massive than the black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.
Hercules A’s black hole heats material and accelerates it to nearly the speed of light, sending it flying out into space at phenomenally high speeds. These highly focused jets lose energy as they travel, eventually slowing down and spreading out to form the cloud-like lobes seen here.
The multiple bright rings and knots seen within these lobes suggest that the black hole has sent out numerous successive bursts of material over the course of its history. The jets stretch for around 1.5 million light-years – roughly 15 times the size of the Milky Way.
Hercules A, also known as 3C 348, lies around two billion light-years away. It is one of the brightest sources of radio emission outside our Galaxy.
This image was originally published in November 2012.
Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Baum & C. O’Dea (RIT), R. Perley & W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Like a lighthouse in the fog, the luminous core of NGC 2768 slowly fades outwards to a dull white haze in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
NGC 2768 is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). It is a huge bundle of stars, dominated by a bright central region, where a supermassive black hole feasts on a constant stream of gas and dust being fed to it by its galactic host.
The galaxy is also marked by a prominent plume of dust reaching out from the center and lying perpendicular to the galaxy’s plane. This dust conceals a symmetrical, S-shaped pair of jets that are being produced by the supermassive black hole as it feeds.
Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast)
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A massive galaxy cluster in the constellation Cetus dominates the centre of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This image is populated with a serene collection of elliptical and spiral galaxies, but galaxies surrounding the central cluster — which is named SPT-CL J0019-2026 — appear stretched into bright arcs, as if distorted by a gargantuan magnifying glass. This cosmic contortion is called gravitational lensing, and it occurs when a massive object like a galaxy cluster has a sufficiently powerful gravitational field to distort and magnify the light from background objects. Gravitational lenses magnify light from objects that would usually be too distant and faint to observe, and so these lenses can extend Hubble’s view even deeper into the Universe.
This observation is part of an ongoing project to fill short gaps in Hubble’s observing schedule by systematically exploring the most massive galaxy clusters in the distant Universe, in the hopes of identifying promising targets for further study with both Hubble and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This particular galaxy cluster lies at a vast distance of 4.6 billion light years from Earth.
Each year, the Space Telescope Science Institute is inundated with observing proposals for Hubble, in which astronomers suggest targets for observation. Even after selecting only the very best proposals, scheduling observations of all of Hubble’s targets for a year is a formidable task. There is sometimes a small fraction of observing time left unused in Hubble’s schedule, so in its ‘spare time’ the telescope has a collection of objects to explore — including the lensing galaxy cluster shown in this image.
[Image description: A cluster of large galaxies, surrounded by various stars and smaller galaxies on a dark background. The central cluster is mostly made of bright elliptical galaxies that are surrounded by a warm glow. Nearby the cluster is the stretched, distorted arc of a galaxy, gravitationally lensed by the cluster.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, H. Ebeling; CC BY 4.0
The galaxies M105, NGC 3384 and NGC 3373 form a nice galactic triplet in the constellation Leo. M105 is the elliptical galaxy on the bottom of the image, NGC 3384 is the elliptical galaxy on the upper right and NGC 3373 is a spiral galaxy on the upper left. Magnitudes for these galaxies are 9.3 for M105, 10.0 for NGC 3384 and 11.8 for NGC 3373. The distance to these galaxies is roughly 30+ million light years.
Tech Specs: Meade 12” LX-90, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO ASI071mc-Pro, Antares Focal Reducer, 67 x 60 second at -10C, 30 darks and 30 flats, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope. Captured using Sequence Generator Pro and processed using PixInsight. Image date: April 3, 2021. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
The “Draco Trio” of galaxies or “Draco Group” (in the constellation Draco, the dragon), are all at around the same distance from Earth, some 130 million light years or so. NGC 5985 at the top is a typical spiral galaxy seen almost face on. NGC 5981, at the bottom of the trio, is also a spiral galaxy seen edge-on.
Perhaps the most interesting from an astrophysical perspective is the galaxy seen at the center. Despite its’ seemingly featureless appearance, NGC 5982 has more to it than meets the eye at first glance!
NGC 5982 is an elliptical galaxy. These are galaxies characterized by a smooth relatively featureless ellipsoidal shape, almost like an egg in space. Typically it’s an egg-shaped blob. Fairly boring. But in this case, look closely toward the center and you may be able to detect a few concentric “shells”. These shells of gas, dust and stellar remnants form circular arcs and are the result of prior galaxy mergers, most likely involvng other, perhaps smaller, elliptical galaxies.
Studies of NGC 5982 have revealed more than 20 such shells in its envelope!
Capture info:
Location: SkyPi Remote Observatory, Pie Town NM US
Telescope: Orion Optics UK AG14 (F3.8)
Camera: QHY 268M
Mount: 10 Micron GM3000
Data: LRGB 30 hours approximately.
Processing: Pixinsight
This is a 2000 X-ray image of the elliptical galaxy NGC 0533 by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/U. Ohio/T.Statler & S.Diehl
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #ChandraXrayObservatory #cxo #galaxy #ellipticalgalaxy
Messier 59 (also known as M99 or NGC 4621) is an elliptical galaxy about 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. This galaxy has many globular clusters: estimated to be about 2,300. This is far more than the roughly 200 orbiting the Milky Way, but dwarfed by the 13,450 orbiting the supergiant elliptical galaxy Messier 87. Lot’s of background galaxies in this view including NGC 4606 and NGC 4607 in the upper left corner and NGC 4638 and NGC 4637 in the lower right corner.
Tech Specs: Sky Watcher Esprit 120ED, ZWO ASI071mc-Pro running at 0C, Celestron CGEM-DX Mount Pier Mounted, ZWO EAF, 75 x 60 second exposures with dark/flat frames, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope, controlled with a ZWO ASIAir Pro. Image date: June 5, 2021. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle 4 Zone).
The focus of this image is the pair of elliptical galaxies in the center of view, they are the large elliptical galaxy NGC 507 and the smaller one above is NGC 508. They are located 210 million light years away in the constellation of Pisces. NGC 507 is classified in the Arp Catalog as Arp 229, Galaxies with Concentric Rings. Looking closely at my image you can see the “ring” which Arp identified. There are so many galaxies in this image!
Tech Specs: Meade 12” LX-90, Antares Focal Reducer, ZWO AS071 running at -10C, Celestron CGEM-DX mount, ZWO ASIAir Plus, ZWO EAF, 108 x 60 second exposures, darks from the library and flats after the imaging session. Image Date: October 29, 2022. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
Messier 84 or M84, also known as NGC 4374, is a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. It is in the bottom right corner of my image. It is the 84th object in the Messier Catalogue and in the heavily populated core of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, part of the local supercluster. Radio observations and Hubble Space Telescope images of M84 have revealed two jets of matter shooting out from its center as well as a disk of rapidly rotating gas and stars indicating the presence of a supermassive black hole. NGC 4388, a spiral galaxy is in the upper left corner of my image.
Tech Specs: Meade 12” LX-90, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO ASI071mc-Pro, Antares Focal Reducer, 68 x 60 second at -10C, 30 darks and 30 flats, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope. Captured using Sequence Generator Pro and processed using PixInsight. Image date: April 4, 2021. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
By studying the inner regions of nine elliptical galaxies with Chandra, scientists can now estimate the rate at which gas is falling toward the galaxies' supermassive black holes. These images also allowed them to estimate the power required to produce radio emitting bubbles in the hot X-ray gas.
This is a Chandra image of the elliptical galaxy NGC 6166.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Stanford U./S.Allen et al.
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #ChandraXrayObservatory #cxo #blackhole #sonification
Giant elliptical Galaxy M49 with its dwarf companion UGC 7636 just below it in the 4 o'clock position. Face on spiral NGC 4535 is on the far right. Taken at Lone Pine Ca., April 2015. Televue NP127is refractor at f4.2; Atik 383L+ at -18 deg C; Orion EQ-G mount;TS OAG; Orion StarShoot guide camera. Astrodon E series LRGB filters. Luminance: 8.5 hrs; RGB: about 2 hrs each.
Here is a triplet of galaxies often referred to as the Draco Trio, NGC 5985, NGC 5982 and NGC 5981. The grouping includes the edge-on barred spiral galaxy, NGC 5981, on the right. The elliptical galaxy NGC 5982 in the center. The last, NGC 5985 is a beautiful face on barred spiral galaxy, on the left. These galaxies are about 100 million light years away. Tech Specs: This image is composed of 60 x 15 second images at ISO 3200 with additional dark and bias frames. Equipment included a Meade LX90 12” telescope, Antares Focal Reducer, and Canon 6D camera. Imaging was done on September 1, 2016.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has given astronomers their most detailed look to date at the X-ray jet blasting out of the nucleus of M87, a giant elliptical galaxy 50 million light years away in the constellation Virgo.
The 2001 X-ray image of the jet reveals an irregular, knotty structure similar to that detected by radio telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope. At the extreme left of the image, the bright galactic nucleus harboring a supermassive black hole shines. The jet is thought to be produced by strong electromagnetic forces created by matter swirling toward the supermassive black hole. These forces pull gas and magnetic fields away from the black hole along its axis of rotation in a narrow jet. Inside the jet, shock waves produce high-energy electrons that spiral around the magnetic field and radiate by the "synchrotron" process, creating the observed radio, optical and X-ray knots. Synchrotron radiation is caused by high-speed charged particles, such as electrons, emitting radiation as they are accelerated in a magnetic field.
By using the High Energy Transmission Grating (HETG) with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) detector aboard Chandra, the scientists were able to measure accurately the spectrum, or distribution of the X-rays with energy. This provided strong support for the model where electrons are accelerated to high energies in the knots, radiating X-rays by the synchrotron process.
The spectrum and intensity of the X-rays from the galactic nucleus also indicate that this radiation is not caused by hot gas produced by material falling into the supermassive black hole. Instead, a high-energy, as yet unresolved, outflow close to the black hole may be producing the X-rays by the same synchrotron process that explains the knots in the jet observed by Chandra.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/H.Marshall et al. Radio: F. Zhou, F.Owen (NRAO), J.Biretta (STScI) Optical: NASA/STScI/UMBC/E.Perlman et al.
Messier 86 (also known as M86 or NGC 4406) is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. Messier 86 is linked by several filaments of ionized gas to the severely disrupted spiral galaxy NGC 4438 (on the right side of my image), indicating that M86 may have stripped some gas and interstellar dust from the spiral. Messier 86 has a rich array of globular clusters, with a total number of around 3,800. Its halo also has a number of stellar streams interpreted as remnants of dwarf galaxies that have been disrupted and absorbed by this galaxy. (ref: Wikipedia).
Tech Specs: Meade 12” LX-90, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO ASI071mc-Pro, Antares Focal Reducer, 67 x 60 second at -10C, 30 darks and 30 flats, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope. Captured using Sequence Generator Pro and processed using PixInsight. Image date: April 5, 2021. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
Having not had a lot of telescope time during the summer months, I find myself reprocessing data collected in the past. This is a reprocessing of the Andromeda Galaxy region including insets of the two brightest satellite galaxies, M110 and M32. This is from data collected from 2015-2016. The wide-field view was collected using a Canon 6D and 400mm lens, the inset images were captured with my Meade 12” LX90 telescope.
Elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87) is a huge galaxy in the constellation Virgo. It is home to several trillion stars and about 15,000 globular clusters, pretty hard to imagine. It is also home to a supermassive black hole that was recently imagined by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. The inset image shows the stream of plasma being ejected from that same black hole.
Technical Card:
•Distance to Earth: 53.49 million light years
•Radius: 60 light years
•Apparent mass: ~2,400 billion M☉
•Apparent size (V): 7.2 × 6.8 moa
•Coordinates: RA 12h 30m 49s | Dec +12° 23′ 28″
Imaging Specs: Meade 12" LX90, Canon 6D, 62 x 60 seconds at ISO 3200 (includes darks, bias and flats), guided, stacked with DSS, processed with ImagesPlus. Image Date: April 22, 2019. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA.
The elliptical galaxy NGC 1600, 200 million light-years away — shown in the centre of the image and highlighted in the box —, hosts in its centre one of the biggest supermassive black holes known . Until the discovery of this example, astronomers assumed that such huge black holes could only be found in the centres of massive galaxies at the centre of galaxy clusters. NGC 1600, however, is a rather isolated galaxy. The image is a composition of a ground based view and observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Digital Sky Survey 2
Read more here.
Messier 49 (also known as M49 or NGC 4472) is a giant elliptical galaxy about 56 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. This galaxy has many globular clusters: estimated to be about 5,900. This is far more than the roughly 200 orbiting the Milky Way, but dwarfed by the 13,450 orbiting the supergiant elliptical galaxy Messier 87. Lot’s of background galaxies in this view down to roughly the 14th magnitude.
Tech Specs: Sky Watcher Esprit 120ED, ZWO ASI071mc-Pro running at 0C, Celestron CGEM-DX Mount Pier Mounted, ZWO EAF, 60 x 60 second exposures with dark/flat frames, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope, controlled with a ZWO ASIAir Pro. Image date: June 6, 2021. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle 4 Zone).
In my view of the Draco Trio you see a close grouping of three very different looking galaxies. There is a spiral galaxy on the top, NGC 5985, the elliptical galaxy NGC 5982, and on the bottom is the edge-on spiral galaxy designated as NGC 5981. All are part of a large group of galaxies called the NGC 5982 cluster. This image is about four hours of collected data.
Tech Specs: Orion 8” RC Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at 0F, 240 x 60 second exposures, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DeepSkyStacker and PixInsight software. Image Date: May 1, 2024. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
Messier 84 or M84, also known as NGC 4374 is a member of a dynamic pairing with M86. A round giant elliptical galaxy some 80,000 light-years wide, M84 shines across 55 million light-years of space. It resides in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the nearest of the large extragalactic populations. M84 is visually part of Markarian’s Chain, a string of eight galaxies that form a 1.5°-long line that shines like flying paper lanterns at the core of the Virgo Cluster. Armenian astrophysicist Benjamin Markarian discovered this feature in the 1960s, noting that these galaxies share a common motion through space. However, later observations have shown that M84 is not a dynamical member of the chain, as its motion does not jive with the rest.
Messier 86 (also known as M86 or NGC 4406) is a 9th-magnitude elliptical/lenticular galaxy at the core of the Virgo Cluster, lying only 17′ from M84. Messier discovered it together with M84, saying the two “nebulae” had the same appearance. On the surface, they do. With its smooth-looking face, M86, like M84, gets gradually fainter the further you look away from the core. And at a glance, M86 may appear only slightly larger than M84 through a small telescope. But this is an illusion created by the galaxy’s lower surface brightness. M86 is, in fact, twice the apparent diameter of M84 and is slightly more elliptical. M86’s 400 billion stars span a whopping 135,000 light-years.
Reference: www.astronomy.com/astronomy-for-beginners/101-must-see-co...
Tech Specs: Sky-Watcher Esprit 120ED Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at 0F, 81x60 seconds guided exposures, Sky-Watcher EQ6R-Pro pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DSS and PixInsight. Image Date: May 26, 2023. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
The black hole at the center of this galaxy is part of a survey of 18 of the biggest black holes in the universe. This large elliptical galaxy is in the center of the galaxy cluster PKS 0745-19, which is located about 1.3 billion light years from Earth.. X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in purple and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope are in yellow.
The researchers found that these black holes may be about ten times more massive than previously thought, with at least ten of them weighing between 10 and 40 billion times the mass of the sun.
All of the potential "ultramassive" black holes found in this study lie in galaxies at the centers of galaxy clusters containing huge amounts of hot gas. This hot gas produces the diffuse X-ray emission seen in the image. Outbursts powered by the central black holes create cavities in the gas preventing it from cooling and forming enormous numbers of stars. To generate the outbursts, the black holes must swallow large amounts of mass. Because the largest black holes can swallow the most mass and power the biggest outbursts, ultramassive black holes had already been predicted to exist to explain some of the most powerful outbursts seen.
In addition to the X-rays from Chandra, the new study also uses radio data from the NSF's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) and the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) and infrared data from the 2 Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS). These results were published [link to press release] in the July 2012 issue of The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/intra/images/monsterBH/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford/Hlavacek-Larrondo, J. et al; Optical: NASA/STScI
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Editor's Note: Happy Thursday, Flickr friends! In honor of Valentine's week, I'll dig out some of our best hearts and rings and pinks and reds for reposting. Also, Marshall Space Flight Center is having our "I Heart NASA" social media campaign. Do you heart NASA? Share your photos on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and use the hashtag #iheartnasa. Share the love. :)
This image shows of a ring in space -- not of jewels, but of black holes. This composite image of Arp 147, a pair of interacting galaxies located about 430 million light years from Earth, shows X-rays from the NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink) and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue) produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md.
Arp 147 contains the remnant of a spiral galaxy (right) that collided with the elliptical galaxy on the left. This collision has produced an expanding wave of star formation that shows up as a blue ring containing in abundance of massive young stars. These stars race through their evolution in a few million years or less and explode as supernovas, leaving behind neutron stars and black holes.
A fraction of the neutron stars and black holes will have companion stars, and may become bright X-ray sources as they pull in matter from their companions. The nine X-ray sources scattered around the ring in Arp 147 are so bright that they must be black holes, with masses that are likely ten to twenty times that of the Sun.
An X-ray source is also detected in the nucleus of the red galaxy on the left and may be powered by a poorly-fed supermassive black hole. This source is not obvious in the composite image but can easily be seen in the X-ray image. Other objects unrelated to Arp 147 are also visible: a foreground star in the lower left of the image and a background quasar as the pink source above and to the left of the red galaxy.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/S.Rappaport et al, Optical: NASA/STScI
Original image: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/arp147/
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
This Hubble Space Telescope image finds the large spiral galaxy, NGC 3227, wrapped in a turbulent gravitational dance with its companion, the elliptical galaxy NGC 3226. The pair – collectively known as Arp 94 – is relatively nearby, between 50 and 60 million light-years away toward the constellation Leo, the Lion. A close look at the area between the two galaxies, reveals faint tidal streams of gas and dust that link the galaxies in their gravitational dance.
NGC 3227 is a Seyfert galaxy, a type of galaxy with a very active nucleus. Seyfert galaxies hold supermassive black holes at their cores. As matter spirals into the black hole, it releases vast amounts of radiation along the black hole’s axis of rotation. giving the galaxy its active nucleus.
Hubble looked at NGC 3227 and 3226 as part of a program to measure black hole masses by observing the dynamics of gas at the centers of bright cluster galaxies. The color red in this image represents both visible red and near infrared wavelengths of light.
For more information, visit: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-captures-a...
Visit Hubble's Galaxies at www.nasa.gov/content/discoveries-hubbles-galaxies
This Hubble Space Telescope image captures the central region of the gigantic elliptical galaxy NGC 474. Located some 100 million light-years from Earth, NGC 474 spans about 250,000 light-years across – that’s 2.5 times larger than our own Milky Way galaxy! Along with its enormous size, NGC 474 has a series of complex layered shells that surround its spherical core. The cause of these shells is unknown, but astronomers theorize that they may be the aftereffects of the giant galaxy absorbing one or more smaller galaxies. In the same way a pebble creates ripples on a pond when dropped into the water, the absorbed galaxy creates waves that form the shells.
About 10% of elliptical galaxies have shell structures, but unlike the majority of elliptical galaxies, which are associated with galaxy clusters, shelled ellipticals usually lie in relatively empty space. It may be that they’ve cannibalized their neighbors.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Carter (Liverpool John Moores University); Image processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America)
For more information, visit: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-peers-thro...
Visit Hubble's Galaxies at www.nasa.gov/content/discoveries-hubbles-galaxies
This moody image shows a galaxy named Messier 85, captured in all its delicate, hazy glory by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Messier 85 slants through the constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair) and lies around 50 million light-years from Earth. It was first discovered by Charles Messier’s colleague Pierre Méchain in 1781 and is included in the Messier catalog of celestial objects.
Messier 85 is intriguing – its properties lie somewhere between those of a lenticular and an elliptical galaxy, and it appears to be interacting with two of its neighbors: the beautiful spiral NGC 4394, located out of frame to the upper left, and the small elliptical MCG 3-32-38, located out of frame to the center bottom.
The galaxy contains some 400 billion stars, most of which are very old. However, the central region hosts a population of relatively young stars of just a few billion years in age; these stars are thought to have formed in a late burst of star formation, likely triggered as Messier 85 merged with another galaxy over four billion years ago. Messier 85 has another potentially strange quality. Almost every galaxy is thought to have a supermassive black hole at its center, but based on measurements of the velocities of stars in this galaxy, it is unclear whether Messier 85 contains such a black hole.
This image combines infrared, visible, and ultraviolet observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. O'Connell
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2023/hubble-gazes-at-a...
This Hubble Space Telescope image spotlights the giant elliptical galaxy UGC 10143 at the heart of galaxy cluster Abell 2147, about 486 million light-years away in the head of the serpent, the constellation Serpens. UGC 10143 is the biggest and brightest member of Abell 2147, which itself may be part of the much larger Hercules Supercluster of galaxies. UGC 10143’s bright center, dim extended halo, and lack of spiral arms and star-forming dust lanes distinguish it as an elliptical galaxy. Ellipticals are often near the center of galaxy clusters, suggesting they may form when galaxies merge.
This image of UGC 10143 is part of a Hubble survey of globular star clusters associated with the brightest galaxies in galaxy clusters. Globular star clusters help astronomers trace the origin and evolution of their galactic neighbors. The Hubble survey looked at the distribution, brightness, and metal content of more than 35,000 globular star clusters.
The image uses data from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Any gaps were filled by Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and the Pan-STARRS collaboration. The color blue represents visible blue light, and reddish-orange represents near infrared light.
Visit Hubble's Galaxies at www.nasa.gov/content/discoveries-hubbles-galaxies
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and W. Harris (McMaster University); Image processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America)
This striking pair is an elliptical galaxy NGC 541 and an unusual star-forming, irregular dwarf galaxy known as Minkowski’s Object (the bluish object to the lower left of NGC 541). Elliptical galaxies are nearly spherical to egg-shaped groups of stars that form when galaxies merge. NGC 541 shoots out radio jets that are invisible to human eyes but detectable by radio telescopes. These jets originate in the accretion disk around the galaxy’s central black hole.
The radio jet from NGC 541 likely caused the star-formation in Minkowski’s Object. Radio galaxies like NGC 541 are surrounded by gaseous halos and/or debris from recent merger events – which may have triggered the radio galaxy activity in the first place. The jet plows into the moderately dense, warm gas around the galaxy and the shock compresses and heats the gas, causing it to become energized, or ionized. As the ionized gas reverts from its higher-energy state to a lower-energy state, energy leaves the cloud in the form of radiation. As the clouds cool, they collapse, giving rise to starbirth. Minkowski’s Object is about 7.5 million years old and consists of about 20 million stars.
Hubble observed Minkowski’s Object and NGC 541 to get a better sense of how star formation occurs in this region, what kind of star formation takes place, and the properties of the jet that triggers it.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Croft (Eureka Scientific Inc.); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America)
Visit Hubble's Galaxies at www.nasa.gov/content/discoveries-hubbles-galaxies
A wealth of galaxies in this view centred on elliptical galaxy M86
from L to R, Arp 120, M86 and M84 form the lower right hand section of Markarian's chain, a visual string of galaxies - my field of view was too small (49 arcmins) to include them all.
Going around the clock:
At 1200 is spiral galaxy NGC 4402
At 0330 is elliptical galaxy M84
At 0400 is elliptical galaxy NGC 4387
At 0530 is spiral galaxy NGC 4388
At 0630 is barred spiral galaxy NGC 4413
At 0800 is spiral galaxy NGC 4425
At 1130 near the very top is a small irregular galaxy IC 3355
At 1100 are "the Eyes" a pair of interacting galaxies (NGC 4435 and NGC 4438)(Arp 120). Gravitational interaction has distorted one of the pair.
38 x 5 minute exposures. Dithered and drizzled.
Takahashi 150mm refractor
SBIG ST-4000XCM One Shot Color CCD camera
Mount: Paramount GTS
Field of view 49 x 49 arcminutes
Post-processing in PixInsight and Photoshop CC.
Editor's Note: This is an archive image from 2002.
Chandra's image of the elliptical galaxy NGC 4697 reveals diffuse hot gas dotted with many point-like sources. As in the elliptical galaxies, NGC 4649 and NGC 1553, the point-like sources are due to black holes and neutron stars in binary star systems. Material pulled off a normal star is heated and emits X-radiation as it falls toward its black hole or neutron star companion.
Black holes and neutron stars are the end state of the brightest and most massive stars. Chandra's detection of numerous neutron stars and black holes in this and other elliptical galaxies shows that these galaxies once contained many very bright, massive stars, in marked contrast to the present population of low-mass faint stars that now dominate elliptical galaxies.
An unusually large number of the binary star X-ray sources in NGC 4697 are in "globular star clusters," round balls of stars in the galaxy that contain about one million stars in a volume where typically only one would be found. This suggests that the extraordinarily dense environment of globular clusters may be a good place for black holes or neutron stars to capture a companion star.
The origin of the hot gas cloud enveloping the galaxy is not known. One possibility is that the gas lost by evaporation from normal stars- so-called stellar winds - is heated by these winds and by supernova explosions.
Read entire caption/view more images: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/1140/
Image credit: NASA/Penn State/G.Garmire et al.
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
As beautiful as the surrounding space may be, the sparkling galaxy in the foreground of this image from the Hubble Space Telescope steals the show. This spotlight-hogging galaxy, seen set against a backdrop of more distant galaxies of all shapes and sizes, is known as PGC 29388.
Although it dominates in this image, this galaxy is a small player on the cosmic stage, and is known as a dwarf elliptical galaxy. As the “dwarf” moniker suggests, the galaxy is on the smaller side, and boasts a “mere” 100 million to a few billion stars — a very small number when compared to the Milky Way's population of around 250 to 400 billion stellar residents.
For more information, visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw2016a/
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Armandroff
With this image, Hubble became the first to resolve giant but delicate filaments of gas shaped by strong magnetic fields around Caldwell 24 — an elliptical galaxy also known as Perseus A and cataloged as NGC 1275. Scientists believe that the hearts of most large galaxies may host a supermassive black hole, with millions or even billions of times the Sun’s mass. As gas falls toward the black hole, it gathers into a so-called accretion disk and becomes compressed and heated, ultimately emitting X-rays. Caldwell 24 is known to scientists as an “active galaxy,” with its central black hole generating unusually powerful X-ray and radio emission.
The tendrils that reach out beyond the galaxy are the only visible-light manifestation of the black hole’s effect on the surrounding gas within the cluster of galaxies that Caldwell 24 belongs to. Hubble’s observations of Caldwell 24, taken in visible light with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2006, marked the first time the individual threads of gas that make up the filaments were resolved. These wispy structures extend up to 20,000 light-years out into the cosmos — around 5,000 times farther than the distance between the Sun and its closest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri. An average filament contains about a million times more mass than our Sun.
The filaments are formed when cold gas from the core of the galaxy is dragged out in the wake of the rising bubbles blown by the black hole. These gossamer strands have somehow withstood the hostile, high-energy environment of the galaxy cluster for over 100 million years. Astronomers believe that magnetic fields may hold the charged gas in place, acting against the tendency to either disperse and evaporate or collapse to form new stars.
At a distance of about 230 million light-years, Caldwell 24 is actually one of the closest giant elliptical galaxies to Earth. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1786 in the constellation Perseus, and is best seen in late fall to early winter from the Northern Hemisphere. (In the Southern Hemisphere, look for it low in the northern sky in the late spring to early summer.) It is both small and dim at magnitude 11.9, so you will need a telescope (the bigger the better) to see it well.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration; Acknowledgment: A. Fabian (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK)
For more information about Hubble’s observations of Caldwell 24, see:
hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2008/news-2008-28.html
hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2003/news-2003-14.html
For Hubble's Caldwell catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit:
Caldwell 77, also cataloged as NGC 5128 and commonly called Centaurus A, is a peculiar elliptical galaxy. Centaurus A is apparently the result of a collision between two otherwise normal galaxies, which led to a fantastic jumble of star clusters and dark, imposing dust lanes. Near the galaxy's center, leftover cosmic debris is steadily being consumed by a central supermassive black hole, making Centaurus A something astronomers call an active galaxy. As in other active galaxies, the black hole’s feeding process generates bursts of radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray light.
“Only” about 11 million light-years away (not far in cosmic terms), Centaurus A is the closest active galaxy to Earth. The galaxy is about 60,000 light-years wide, but this Hubble image zooms in on a region that is about 8,500 light-years wide. The image combines observations taken in visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 in 2010. Hubble’s observations of Centaurus A have provided insights into star formation in the galaxy, peering into regions typically obscured by dust and revealing the vibrant glow of young, blue star clusters. Using its infrared vision, Hubble also discovered that a tilted disk of hot gas 130 light-years across is encircling the black hole at the heart of Centaurus A, which is likely supplying material to a smaller, inner accretion disk that feeds the black hole. In addition, astronomers have used Hubble to probe the galaxy’s outskirts, finding that Centaurus A’s vast halo of stars extends much farther out than previously imagined.
In 1986, Centaurus A got the world’s attention when amateur astronomer Robert Evans discovered a Type Ia supernova in the bizarre galaxy. Supernovae like this one erupt after a compact star called a white dwarf siphons material off of a companion star, resulting in an uncontrolled fusion reaction that ultimately detonates the white dwarf. Since then, Centaurus A has produced just one more known supernova, observed in 2016.
Centaurus A was discovered by astronomer James Dunlop in 1826. It is the fifth brightest galaxy in the sky, making it an ideal target for amateur astronomers. It is best spotted from the Southern Hemisphere in autumn and can be found in the Centaurus constellation. Northern Hemisphere observers will need to be as far south as possible and look for the galaxy low in the southern sky during late spring. With a magnitude of 6.7, it’s visible in binoculars, but a telescope is recommended for ideal viewing. Through a telescope the galaxy will appear nearly circular, with its prominent, dark dust lane crossing the center.
For more information about Hubble’s observations of Caldwell 77, see:
hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2011/news-2011-18.h...
Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration; Acknowledgment: R. O’Connell (University of Virginia) and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee
For Hubble's Caldwell catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit:
The first time I saw a professional photo of this trio, I thought they had been photoshopped next to each other. This is a rich field of galaxies in the constellation Draco which features a spiral whose structure is visible (NGC 5985, on the left), an elliptical galaxy (NGC 5982, center), and an edge-on spiral (NGC 5981, right). The three galaxies are not gravitationally associated in a group, but are all over 100 million light years away. I like how adding extra data brought out the pinwheel like fringes of NGC 5985, and the shell structure of NGC 5982.
This is a stack of 15 3 minute sub-frames and 23 4 minute sub-frames shot from Death Valley and Lone Pine CA. The telescope and camera were a Celestron 9.25" Edge HD at f/2.3 with Hyperstar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD camera. Pre-processing and stacking were done with Nebulosity, and final processing in PixInsight and PS CS 5.1.
The center (J2000) of the image is at
RA 15h 38m 40s
DEC +59° 25' 19"
The image spans 34.5' by 51'.
Editor's note: I resisted all day long, but there just MUST be a green image today. Here's a Chandra beauty from 2002. Happy St. Patrick's Day!
(From 2002) Chandra's image of the lenticular (an elliptical-type galaxy with a disk of old stars) galaxy NGC 1553 reveals diffuse hot gas dotted with many point-like sources. As in the elliptical galaxies, NGC 4649 and NGC 4697, the point-like sources are due to black holes and neutron stars in binary star systems where material pulled off a normal star is heated and emits X-radiation as it falls toward its black hole or neutron star companion.
Black holes and neutron stars are the end state of the brightest and most massive stars. Chandra's detection of numerous neutron stars and black holes in this and other elliptical galaxies shows that these galaxies once contained many very bright, massive stars, in marked contrast to the present population of low-mass faint stars that now dominate elliptical galaxies.
The bright central source in NGC 1553 is probably due to a supermassive black hole in the nucleus of the galaxy. The nature of the spiral feature curling out from either side of this source is not known. It could be caused by shock waves from a pair of bubbles of high energy particles that were ejected from the vicinity of the supermassive black hole.
Original caption/more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/1058/
Image credit: NASA/CXC/UVa/E.Blanton et al.
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
The Draco Galaxy Triplet,. top to bottom NGC5985 Seyfert Face on Spiral Galaxy, NGC5982 Elliptical Galaxy, & NGC 5981 Edge on Spiral Galaxy, 100 million light years distance, .5.5 inch Newt. Scope & Modified Canon Rebel Xsi, ISO 1600, 2 hour exposure.
Just before the Event Horizon Telescope started its imaging run on the supermassive black hole at the center of M87, I was imaging the same region of the sky with my Celestron Edge HD 925. The galaxy in question, M87, is in the lower left corner of this image. It is the closest Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG) to us, and it shows a relativistic jet when you take enough data to capture that feature.
The other galaxies that cross the top part of this picture are known as Markarian's Chain -- all of the prominent galaxies in this picture are part of the Virgo Cluster. M87 and the rest of the Virgo Cluster galaxies are about 55 million light years away. At that distance, if there was a civilization looking back at Earth, the image they would currently get is of a planet whose biosphere had just rebounded from the Chicxulub impact. However, any such image is exceedingly unlikely. On the full size scale of this image (1684x2408 pixels), the supermassive black hole would be 16 millionths of a pixel in size. That black hole is roughly 3 million times the diameter of the Earth. Using a radio telescope the size of the Earth, we were just able to resolve the black hole.
This image is a mosaic of 4 separate tiles. Each of those is a stack of 4 minute exposures. Images were shot with an Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with Hyperstar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD. Preprocessing was done in Nebulosity. The stacking, initial processing, and mosaic composition was done in PixInsight. Final processing was done in PixInsight and PS CS 5.1.
The image center (J2000) is at:
RA 12h 29m 9s
DEC +13° 0' 17"
The image spans 1° 10' by 1° 40'.
There are 14 galaxies with NGC designations, and about 100 galaxies in total visible in the picture.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has shed new light on the mystery of why giant elliptical galaxies have few, if any, young stars. This new evidence highlights the important role that supermassive black holes play in the evolution of their host galaxies.
Because star-forming activity in many giant elliptical galaxies has shut down to very low levels, these galaxies mostly house long-lived stars with low masses and red optical colors. Astronomers have therefore called these galaxies "red and dead”.
Previously it was thought that these red and dead galaxies do not contain large amounts of cold gas − the fuel for star formation − helping to explain the lack of young stars. However, astronomers have used ESA's Herschel Space Observatory to find surprisingly large amounts of cold gas in some giant elliptical galaxies. In a sample of eight galaxies, six contain large reservoirs of cold gas. This is the first time that astronomers have seen large quantities of cold gas in giant elliptical galaxies that are not located at the center of a massive galaxy cluster.
With lots of cold gas, astronomers would expect many stars to be forming in these galaxies, contrary to what is observed. To try to understand this inconsistency, astronomers studied the galaxies at other wavelengths, including X-rays and radio waves. The Chandra observations map the temperature and density of hot gas in these galaxies. For the six galaxies containing abundant cold gas, including NGC 4636 and NGC 5044 shown here, the X-ray data provide evidence that the hot gas is cooling, providing a source for the cold gas observed with Herschel. However, the cooling process stops before the cold gas condenses to form stars. What prevents the stars from forming?
A strong clue comes from the Chandra images. The hot gas in the center of the six galaxies containing cold gas appears to be much more disturbed than in the cold gas-free systems. This is a sign that material has been ejected from regions close to the central black hole. These outbursts are possibly driven, in part, by clumpy, cold gas that has been pulled onto the black hole. The outbursts dump most of their energy into the center of the galaxy, where the cold gas is located, preventing the cold gas from cooling sufficiently to form stars.
The other galaxies in the sample, NGC 1399 and NGC 4472, are also forming few if any stars, but they have a very different appearance. No cold gas was detected in these galaxies, and the hot gas in their central regions is much smoother. Additionally, they have powerful jets of highly energetic particles, as shown in radio images from the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. These jets are likely driven by hot gas falling towards the central supermassive black holes. By pushing against the hot gas, the jets create enormous cavities that are observed in the Chandra images, and they may heat the hot, X-ray emitting gas, preventing it from cooling and forming cold gas and stars. The centers of NGC 1399 and NGC 4472 look smoother in X-rays than the other galaxies, likely because their more powerful jets produce cavities further away from the center, where the X-ray emission is fainter, leaving their bright cores undisturbed.
A paper describing these results was published in the February 25, 2014 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is available online. The first author is Norbert Werner from Stanford University in California.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
Original caption/more images: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/red-and-dea...
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ/N.Werner et al; Optical: DSS
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
_______________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
This Hubble image shows the center of the elliptical galaxy Caldwell 52 (NGC 4697). It is a composite of infrared and visible-light observations taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and its Advanced Camera for Surveys.
The galaxies lies roughly 40 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
Credit: NASA, ESA, B. Boizelle (Texas A&M University), and C. Sarazin (University of Virginia); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For Hubble's Caldwell catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit:
This close-up view of the center of Caldwell 24, combining visible and infrared observations taken by Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in 1995 and 2001, displays a collision of galactic proportions. A dusty spiral galaxy appears to be rotating on edge, like a pinwheel, as it slides through the larger, brighter galaxy, Caldwell 24. These galaxies are believed to be colliding at over 6 million miles per hour.
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: M. Donahue (STScI) and J. Trauger (JPL)
For Hubble's Caldwell catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit:
Surprisingly complex loops and blobs of cosmic dust lie across the face of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1316. These are thought to be the remains of the interstellar medium associated with one or more spiral galaxies that have been gravitationally pulled into NGC 1316. Evidence of these mergers was provided by Hubble’s accurate measurements of globular star clusters found within the galaxy.
NGC 1316 is located approximately 62 million light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Fornax. It is believed to house a supermassive black hole that contains 130 million to 150 million solar masses.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/image/1671/news/4-galaxies
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: P. Goudfrooij (STScI)
Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the large and unusual galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128) as seen in this Hubble close-up of one portion of the strange celestial object. Astronomers describe Centaurus A as having a “peculiar morphology,” very likely the result of a collision between a giant elliptical and a smaller galaxy. At its center, NGC 5128 hosts a supermassive black hole with a mass totaling 55 million suns.
Perhaps more notably, Centaurus A was one of the first extragalactic radio sources ever identified. Subsequent studies have found a powerful twin-lobed jet emanating from its core at extraordinary velocities. The inner parts of the jet have been clocked at moving approximately half the speed of light.
While the jet is not visible in this picture, Hubble’s panchromatic vision — stretching from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths — reveals the vibrant glow of young, blue star clusters, red patches of glowing hydrogen clouds, and a glimpse into regions normally obscured by dust.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/image/2858/news_release/2011-18
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
Acknowledgment: R. O'Connell (University of Virginia) and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee
This is from a stack of 17 exposures that were meant to be part of a larger mosaic. I have some of that mosaic assembled in another image. I thought I might be able to pull out the relativistic jet, but it appears I need different exposure settings. NO SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE FOR ME!
Images were shot with a Celestron Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with Hyperstar and an Atik 314L+ one shot color CCD. Initial preprocessing with darks and flats in Nebulosity; stacking and initial processing in PixInsight; final processing in PS CS 5.1.
Image center (J2000) is at:
RA 12h 30m 14s
DEC +12° 36' 46"
This composite image shows an intergalactic "weather map" around the elliptical galaxy NGC 5813, the dominant central galaxy in a galaxy group located about 105 million light years away from Earth. Just like a weather map for a local forecast on Earth, the colored circle depicts variations in temperature across a region. This particular maps presents the range of temperature in a region of space as observed by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, with the hotter temperatures shown in red and decreasingly cooler temperatures shown in orange, yellow, green, and blue.
A notable feature of this image is the relatively small variation in temperature across the weather map, with a range of only about 30% across several hundred thousand light years. Without any sources of heat, the densest gas near the center of the map should cool to much lower temperatures as energy is lost because of radiation. However, regular outbursts generated by the supermassive black hole at the center of NGC 5813 provide heat, preventing the gas near the center of the galaxy from cooling to such low temperatures. This decreases the amount of cool gas available to form new stars. This process is analogous to the sun providing heat for Earth's atmosphere and preventing water and water vapor from cooling and freezing.
How do outbursts generated by the black hole provide heat? Powerful jets produced as gas swirls toward the black hole push cavities into the hot gas and drive shock waves -- like sonic booms -- outwards, heating the gas. The shocks from the most recent outburst, which occurred about 3 million years ago in Earth’s time frame, show up as a "figure eight" structure at the center of the image. This is the first system where the observed heating from shocks alone is sufficient to keep the gas from cooling indefinitely. These shocks allow the relatively tiny black hole to heat the huge area surrounding it, as shown here.
The gas around NGC 5813 shows evidence for three distinct outbursts from the black hole, which occurred 3 million, 20 million and 90 million years ago, in Earth's time frame. The average power of the two most recent outbursts differ by about a factor of six, showing that the power delivered by the jets can vary significantly over timescales of about 10 million years.
A paper describing these results has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The first author of the paper is Scott Randall from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the co-authors are Bill Forman from CfA; Simona Giacintucci from CfA and INAF in Bologna, Italy; Paul Nulsen from CfA; Ming Sun from the University of Virginia; Christine Jones from CfA; Eugene Churazov from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany and the Space Research Institute in Moscow, Russia; Larry David and Ralph Kraft from CfA; Megan Donahue from Michigan State University; Elizabeth Blanton from Boston University; and Aurora Simionescu and Norbert Werner from Stanford University.
Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/S.Randall et al., Optical: SDSS
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/ngc5813/
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
Countless stars, from the compact core to the less dense outskirts of M32, are packed into this single Hubble image. An elliptical galaxy, M32 is located 2.5 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Andromeda. It is one of two satellite galaxies orbiting M31, the Andromeda galaxy, that also belong to the Messier catalog. (The other is M110.)
M32 was discovered by the French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil in 1749 and is best observed in November. The galaxy has an apparent magnitude of 8.1, and can be seen using a medium-sized telescope. It is relatively easy to locate, as it falls in the same field of view as M31, but a large telescope is needed to resolve any detail beyond a spot of light.
This Hubble image of a portion of M32 shows stars crowded in the galaxy's core at upper left, while stars in the outer parts of the galaxy fill the rest of the view. The image combines visible and infrared observations taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The galaxy has been used to study gravitational microlensing ― a phenomenon in which the gravity of stars bends light as the stars pass one another ― and variable stars that can be used to measure astronomical distances.
For more information about Hubble’s observations of M32, see: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/1999/news-1999-40.html
For Hubble's Messier catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit: www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-messier-catalog
Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Crotts (Columbia University), W. Freedman (University of Chicago), and J. Westphal (California Institute of Technology); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)