Prelims – Current events of national and international importance
Mains (GS III) – Science and Technology- Awareness in the fields of Space
Why in News?
A team of international researchers recently discovered a galaxy with nine rings, named Bullseye.
- It is a collisional ring galaxy discovered recently by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
- Size - It is nearly 2.5-times larger than the Milky Way with a diameter of 250,000 light-years.
- Type - Spiral galaxy.
- A blue dwarf galaxy, positioned at the center-left of the image, is believed to have interacted with the Bullseye Galaxy approximately 50 million years ago.
- It results in the distinctive shape of the Bullseye Galaxy.
- A thin trail of gas connecting the two galaxies even though they are separated by 130,000 lightyears (or 1.22 billion billion km).
- The blue dwarf galaxy’s straight path through the Bullseye Galaxy caused gas in the latter to ripple back and forth in waves, creating new places of star formation.
- The interaction didn’t alter the orbits of individual stars but it caused groups of stars to pile up and form the distinct rings over millions of years.
- Bullseye hosts a lot of neutral hydrogen gas, considering its mass in stars.
- That reservoir of star-forming material is similar to known low surface brightness galaxies, strengthening the notion that collisional ring galaxies evolve into these fainter objects as their rings fade.
- The Bullseye Galaxy will continue to evolve and, as a result, will have these star-filled rings only for a short interval of time.
- This means the astronomers captured an intriguing image of a multi-ring galaxy in a special moment.
- Bullseye Galaxy also contains signs that it could one day evolve into a giant low surface brightness (GLSB) galaxy, which are important in the study of dark matter.
Giant low surface brightness (GLSB) galaxies are the largest of the low surface-brightness galaxies. All GLSB galaxies are truly colossal.
Reference
The Hindu | Bullseye Galaxy
