Posts : 1872 Join date : 2008-10-30 Age : 72 Location : Florida
Subject: The Runaway Galaxy Sun Dec 07, 2014 9:30 pm
Day 7 of the 2014 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar - http://goo.gl/g4BawQ - 25 photos eventually. The Runaway Galaxy. Spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 is zooming toward the upper right of this image, in between other galaxies in the Norma cluster located over 200 million light-years away. The spiral plows through the seething intra-cluster gas (180 million degrees Fahrenheit) so rapidly - at nearly 4.5 million miles per hour - much of its own gas is caught and torn away. Astronomers call this "ram pressure stripping." The galaxy's stars remain intact due to the binding force of their gravity. Tattered threads of gas, the blue jellyfish-tendrils trailing the galaxy, illustrate the process. Ram pressure has strung this gas out across intergalactic space. Once there, these strips of gas have erupted with young, massive stars, which are pumping out light in vivid blues and ultraviolet. (NASA, ESA, STScI/AURA)
Sun Dec 07, 2014 9:30 pm
