Daily Image
08-03-2007
A galaxy being blown apart
| Submitter: | Tom Oosterloo |
| Description: | In normal spiral galaxies, star formation is a relatively peaceful process, taking billions of years to slowly convert the gas in these systems into stars. However, some galaxies choose a more exciting life: they form stars at a much higher rate, but at the price of blowing themselves apart. The amount of energy released by the very high star formation rate is so large that it blows the gas that has not been converted into stars out of the galaxy. Hence, after such a big burst of star formation, suddenly no more stars can form because there is no gas left. The pictures show this process in action. The photograph shows the southern spiral NGC 253, with in red the X-ray emission and in green the neutral gas, as observed with the Australia Telescope Compact Array. The cartoon shows what could be happening in the galaxy: near the centre of NGC 253, a strong burst of star formation is going on, blowing huge bubbles of hot (1000000 degrees) gas out into space, destroying the gas disk of NGC 253. For more info: http://www.astro.rug.nl/~boomsma/publications/ |
| Copyright: | Rense Boomsma |
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