A brand new picture from the Darkish Vitality Digital camera peels again the layers of a “galactic onion” whose shells lengthen 150,000 light-years into house.
Positioned about 70 million light-years from Earth, the shell galaxy NGC 3923 — a kind of elliptical galaxy — was photographed utilizing the US Division of Vitality’s (DOE) Darkish Vitality Digital camera on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope on the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, which is operated by the U.S. Nationwide Science Basis (NSF).
NGC 3923 reveals symmetrical, onion-like layers that seemingly shaped from a galactic merger, during which a bigger galaxy slowly siphoned stars away from the disk of a smaller spiral galaxy. These stars steadily combined into the bigger galaxy’s halo, forming the ensuing combo galaxy’s concentric shells, in line with a press release from the NSF’s NOIRLab.
Associated: Wonderful images from Darkish Vitality Digital camera in Chile
“The shells of NGC 3923 make the galaxy fairly distinctive,” officers mentioned within the assertion. “Not solely does it have the most important recognized shell of all noticed shell galaxies, however it additionally has the most important variety of shells and the most important ratio between the radii of the outermost and innermost shells.”
Observations of NGC 3923 counsel it may have as many as 42 shells, the truth is, which seem like extra refined than these of different shell galaxies. Its outermost layers had been created first, adopted by these nearer to the galaxy’s core. Spanning 150,000 light-years throughout, NGC 3923 is about 50% bigger than our Milky Manner.
“Its shells are additionally curiously symmetrical, whereas different shell galaxies are extra skewed,” officers mentioned within the assertion. “These unusual options are a chic instance of the distinctive buildings that galaxies can embody relying on their particular evolutionary circumstances.”
The latest Darkish Vitality Digital camera picture additionally captures a handful of different galaxies and a big gravitational lens across the galaxy cluster PLCK G287.0+32.9, positioned close to the highest of the picture. Gravitational lensing happens when huge objects with highly effective gravitational fields bend and enlarge gentle from extra distant sources, inflicting the objects to seem stretched out.
“Gravitational lenses permit astronomers to discover essentially the most profound questions of our Universe, together with the character of darkish matter and the worth of the Hubble fixed, which defines the growth of the Universe,” NOIRLab officers mentioned within the assertion.
