Hubble celebrates 19th anniversary with fountain of youth

April 21, 2009
Hubble celebrates 19th anniversary with fountain of youth

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This brilliant image, courtesy of NASA/ESA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a fitting 19th anniversary tribute to the workhorse space observatory. This interacting group contains several galaxies, along with a "cosmic fountain" of stars, gas and dust that stretches over 100,000 light years. Resembling a pair of owl's eyes, the two nuclei of the colliding galaxies can be seen in the process of merging at the upper left. The bizarre blue bridge of material extending out from the northern component looks as if it connects to a third galaxy but in reality the galaxy is in the background and not connected at all. The blue "fountain" is the most striking feature of this galaxy troupe and it contains complexes of super star clusters that may have as many as dozens of individual young star clusters in them. Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Over the past 19 years Hubble has taken dozens of exotic pictures of galaxies going "bump in the night" as they collide with each other and have a variety of close encounters of the galactic kind. Just when you thought these interactions couldn't look any stranger, this image of a trio of galaxies, called Arp 194, looks as if of the galaxies has sprung a leak. The bright blue streamer is really a stretched spiral arm full of newborn blue stars. This typically happens when two galaxies interact and gravitationally tug at each other gravitationally.

Resembling a pair of owl's eyes, the two nuclei of the colliding can be seen in the process of merging at the upper left. The bizarre blue bridge of material extending out from the northern component looks as if it connects to a third galaxy but in reality this galaxy is in the background and not connected at all. Hubble's sharp view allows astronomers to try and sort out visually which are the foreground and background objects when galaxies, superficially, appear to overlap.

The blue "fountain" is the most striking feature of this galaxy troupe and it contains complexes of super star clusters that may have as many as dozens of individual young star clusters in them. It formed as a result of the interactions among the galaxies in the northern component of Arp 194. The gravitational forces involved in a galaxy interaction can enhance the star formation rate and give rise to brilliant bursts of star formation in merging systems.

Hubble's resolution shows clearly that the stream of material lies in front of the southern component of Arp 194, as shown by the dust that is silhouetted around the star cluster complexes.

The details of the interactions among the multiple galaxies that make up Arp 194 are complex. The system was most likely disrupted by a previous collision or close encounter. The shapes of all the galaxies involved have been distorted by their gravitational interactions with one another.

Arp 194, located in the constellation of Cepheus, resides approximately 600 million light-years away from Earth. Arp 194 is one of thousands of interacting and merging galaxies known in our nearby Universe. These observations were taken in January 2009 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Blue, green and red filters were composited together to form this rather picturesque image of a galaxy interaction.

This picture was issued to celebrate the 19th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1990. Hubble has made more than 880 000 observations and snapped over 570 000 images of 29 000 celestial objects over the past 19 years.

Source: ESA/Hubble Information Centre (news : web)

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omatumr
Apr 21, 2009

Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
I have long been a critic of NASA for its refusal to modify obsolete dogmas about the solar system with new isotopic data from the 1969 Apollo Mission to the Moon [1] and the 1996 Genesis Probe into Jupiter's atmosphere [2].

[1] See 1983 data at http://www.omatumr.com/index1.html" title="http://[url=http://http://www.omatumr.com/index1.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.omatum...ex1.html]http://www.omatum...ex1.html[/url]
[2] See 1998 data at http://www.omatumr.com/index1.html" title="http://[url=http://http://www.omatumr.com/index1.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.omatum...ex1.html]http://www.omatum...ex1.html[/url]

Therefore, observational information from the Hubble telescope likely represents NASA's greatest contribution to science to date.

With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
http://www.omatumr.com
yyz
Apr 21, 2009

Rank: not rated yet
While checking for info at NED, I came across this 2003 study of Arp 194: http://adsabs.har...25.1897M . Their ground based observations show measured speeds of 10,502 km/s for the Southern galaxy (A194S) and 10,430 km/s for the merged Northern component (A194N). They propose that the Southern component was responsible for dragging out material from the Northern component (Gravitationally, I might add). Additional imaging in Hydrogen-alpha light and radio plus spectra show the brightest %u2018blue blob%u2019 to be actively forming stars and that %u201Cthe mass of %u2018blob A%u2019 is within the range of dwarf galaxies%u201D. Also, it%u2019s recession speed closely matches the other galaxies, ruling out line-of-sight arguments. So it may be a tidal dwarf galaxy (or its%u2019 precursor)! The hi-res TIFF image at the Hubble site is just awesome to view closeup. I%u2019m sure at least someone will write up a paper analyzing the data gathered to make this pic. This image could also help large ground-based telescopes zero in on regions of interest for spectroscopic and kinematic analysis. The 2003 paper mentioned an estimated 30,000 O and B supergiants populate the brightest of the %u2018blue blobs%u2019 designated %u2018blob A%u2019 in the paper! That really is a super star cluster (or maybe a smallish tidal dwarf galaxy).
yyz
Apr 21, 2009

Rank: not rated yet
Try this link to the 2003 paper on Arp 194: http://arxiv.org/...47v1.pdf
omatumr
Apr 22, 2009

Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
EXPERIMENTAL DATA

Sorry about the broken links above.

Send me an e-mail (omatumr@yahoo.com) if you want to see surprising isotope data from the Apollo Missions to the Moon and the 1996 Genesis Probe into Jupiter's atmosphere.

If these experimental data from missions inside the Solar System had been honestly considered by NASA, they would far exceed the scientific value of pictures of the distant cosmos from the Hubble telescope.

With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
http://www.omatumr.com

Rank 4.8 /5 (6 votes)
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galaxies, gravitational forces, star formation rate, galaxy interaction, blue bridge, spiral arm
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