Saturday, March 08, 2008

Name This Galaxy



Really. You can came it. It has no name. It is a tiny galaxy in a photo of another tiny galaxy, ESO-325-G004, which is itself a tiny speck 450 million light years from Earth in a cluster of galaxies called Abell S0740, which are a cluster of tiny specks in the southern hemisphere constellation of Centaurus. To the left and center you can see even smaller galaxies. Here's few more cuties from the same tiny speck of sky.

The bright objects with cross-hair points are very small stars in our own galaxy that happen to be in the field of view. Here's another:
This is a loose barred spiral galaxy with very active starforming regions in the bright blue section of the arm. This appears to be the aftermath of a collision and merger of two galaxies. The arms look very odd and incongruous for a barred spiral. The bright blue area of star formation may be caused by the collision. Note the even more distant spiral galaxies around it. The mind boggles. This is what these galaxies looked like a billion years ago, when life first started to form on Earth. Here's some more:
This is a kool duo of a nearly round elliptical galaxy, an edge-on Sombrero Galaxy-type spiral with massive amounts of dust, and a half dozen dwarf ellipticals.

These photos were taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, which in my opinion is the best investment of tax dollars the U.S. has ever made.

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