NASA and the European House Company have launched a picture of an irregular dwarf galaxy taken by the Hubble House Telescope, which they admit is “not thrilling” at first look. Nevertheless, there’s extra happening than initially meets the attention. The companies stated they’re at present conducting in depth analysis into the “complicated construction” of NGC 5238, which is situated 14.5 million light-years away within the constellation Canes Venatici. In actual fact, astronomers assume the distribution of stars in NGC 5238 might have been distorted after it swallowed one other galaxy.
They imagine that due to the variety of stars in NGC 5238 (which Hubble is nice at serving to picture), it might have had a “shut encounter” with one other galaxy a billion years in the past. However as a result of there aren’t any galaxies shut sufficient to distort the star distribution on this manner, it’s extra doubtless that NGC 5238 merged with a smaller galaxy. Along with having many stars, the galaxy can also be house to globular star clusters, which NASA describes as “glowing shiny spots in and across the galaxy, round which many extra stars are clustered.”
Astronomers plan to dig deeper into the info to study NGC 5238’s previous. In the event that they discover a inhabitants of stars with completely different properties than most different stars within the galaxy, that might be a transparent indication {that a} merger has occurred. They will even attempt to decide whether or not a sudden “burst of star formation” occurred after galaxies got here collectively.
NASA factors out that the merger of dwarf irregular galaxies with smaller satellite tv for pc galaxies is precisely what might have stimulated galaxy clustering within the early universe. Subsequently, the company stated, the info captured by Hubble from NGC 5238 might assist researchers take a look at basic concepts in regards to the evolution of the universe.
