Hubble Telescope captures image of Galactic Jellyfish

Web Desk
March 26, 2023

The picture shows thread-like stars moving away from the body of the galaxy making it appear like a jellyfish

Hubble Space Telescope showing an image of JW100 on March 24, 2023. — NASA
Hubble Space Telescope showing an image of JW100 on March 24, 2023. — NASA

Hubble Space Telescope released a photo of beautiful and shining galaxies in which it focused on capturing a giant galaxy of stars forming a shape like a jellyfish — JW100 —, which is located at a distance of 800 million light years from the Earth in the constellation of Pegasus, according to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The picture was released by European Space Agency (ESA) on March 20.

The recently captured galaxy is surrounded by several distant — small appearing galaxies — in which epileptical objects can be seen shining in the dark.

The jellyfish galaxy can be seen at the lower right bottom of the image and right at the bottom of a big shining galaxy emitting enormous light at the top called IC 5338.

Recently, NASA said that it is aiming to build the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope which would be far more powerful than Hubble and can take detailed images from distant places in space.

Among the most famous space telescopes also includes the James Webb Telescope which has captured some remarkable pictures of distant galaxies and stars.

This rare sight is a super-bright, massive Wolf-Rayet star captured by James Webb Space Telescope. — NASA

The picture shows thread-like stars moving away from the body of the galaxy making it appear like a jellyfish.

"These are called tendrils which are formed by ram pressure stripping which occurs when galaxies encounter the diffuse gas that pervades galaxy clusters," said ESA in a statement.

"As galaxies plough through this tenuous gas, it acts like a headwind, stripping gas and dust from the galaxy and creating the trailing streamers that prominently adorn JW100," ESA officials wrote.

ESA officials further noted in their statement that "It's not unusual for cD galaxies to exhibit multiple nuclei, as they are thought to grow by consuming smaller galaxies, the nuclei of which can take a long time to be absorbed."

They also noted: "The bright points of light studding its outer fringes are a rich population of globular clusters."

"These tendrils represent star formation under extreme conditions, and could help astronomers understand the process of star formation elsewhere in the universe," the statement read.


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