Breathtakingly beautiful distant galaxies in deep space

On a summer night, there is a cool breeze. When you look up at the starry sky, you can find bright starlight from 28 million light-years away in the direction of the Virgo galaxy cluster. If you borrow the lenses of the "Spitzer" space telescope, You will see this stunning picture:

This is known as one of the most beautiful galaxies - the Sombrero Galaxy, also known as the M104 galaxy. This beautiful galaxy with a diameter of 50,000 light-years was first discovered by the French astronomer Pierre Machin, and was later included in Charles Messier's "List of Galaxy Clusters", numbered M104, which is still in use today.

From a traditional astronomical point of view, the edge of a galaxy, usually composed of old stars and globular clusters, is also called a galaxy halo. But most of the sprawling brim of the Sombrero Galaxy is shimmering with younger stars. From the point of view of galaxy evolution, the main materials of stars in early galaxies are hydrogen and helium. With the fusion and burning of these gas giant stars, metallic elements are produced inside the stars. These early stars will be created by super galaxy explosions and other means. The heavy metal elements are thrown out, and the heavier metal elements squeeze the gas elements to the edge of the galaxy, and re-form the raw materials for the stars in the center of the galaxy.

Therefore, an important indicator for judging the age of a star is the content of heavy metal elements in the star. If the heavy metal content is high, then the star is relatively young, and vice versa. Just like our solar system, it is the gift of a certain supernova explosion, otherwise there would be no raw materials for life and the earth.

The stars on the brim of the Straw Hat Galaxy are mostly young stars with rich metal content. This discovery completely subverts the traditional theory and casts a layer of mystery on its origin.

strange combination

If you look at it intuitively, the Sombrero Galaxy is elliptical as a whole, and it seems that it can be defined as an elliptical galaxy, but the truth is far from that simple. American astronomer Edwin Hubble classified galaxy shapes into three types: elliptical, spiral and irregular. M104 has a huge disk of dust, which is easily reminiscent of the huge cantilever of a spiral galaxy, but the cantilever structure is compact and not so obvious, so some astronomers classify it as Sa and call it a cantilever-free galaxy.

However, some astronomers have discovered a large number of globular clusters by observing the cores of galaxies. Related studies have found that at least 1,900 globular clusters form huge and bright galaxy cores. Just like the elliptical tops we see, they can also be classified as Type S0.

I have to admit that M104 has the characteristics of both a spiral galaxy and an elliptical galaxy, like a human hybrid, no wonder it is so beautiful.

dazzling center

Using the Spitzer space telescope's infrared radiation observations, we can look beyond the interstellar dust to see the full picture of the galaxy's core. Infrared radiation can penetrate the dust that blocks visible light. In the infrared band, the clumps of dust also become transparent to starlight, so that the dazzling bulge composed of countless stars can be clearly seen.

Through the detection of electromagnetic radiation in the center, the intensity is 10 times that of the Milky Way, it can be inferred that there is a huge black hole in the core of M104, the mass is 1 billion times that of the sun. Black holes continue to devour surrounding objects and release a large number of high-energy particles and rays at the poles, which is why the straw hat pops up so brightly.

galaxy collision theory

Given the strange characteristics of the Sombrero Galaxy, astronomers speculate that M104 was formed by the collision of a spiral galaxy and an elliptical galaxy. Elliptical galaxies with larger core masses push spiral galaxies to the edge, forming the brim. The originally slender spiral arm was squeezed by collision and finally became compact and dense.

And the young stars we see in the brim area are the remnants of the collision of spiral galaxies, which used to be the core of spiral galaxies.

Think of the Andromeda galaxy closest to us, which is only 2.54 million light-years away from the earth, and is slowly approaching us. In the distant future, perhaps the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy will be in close contact, and perhaps our solar system will become the pearl on the brim of the new galaxy after the collision.