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Jellyfish galaxy plowing its way through the intercluster medium

Jellyfish galaxy plowing through the intercluster medium
Click for original image.

The European Space Agency (ESA) today released another in a series of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope during the past two years of what astronomers call jellyfish galaxies, so named because such galaxies have tendrils that extend out beyond the galaxy like the tendrils of jellyfish. This new picture is to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, and shows a galaxy about 900 million light years away.

[T]he space between galaxies in a cluster is … pervaded with a searingly hot plasma known as the intracluster medium. While this plasma is extremely tenuous, galaxies moving through it experience it almost like swimmers fighting against a current, and this interaction can strip galaxies of their star-forming gas. This interaction between the intracluster medium and the galaxies is called ram-pressure stripping, and is the process responsible for the trailing tendrils of this jellyfish galaxy.

The arrow in the image indicates the galaxy’s direction of travel through the intercluster medium, resulting in the outer parts of the leading arm to be pushed backward above the galaxy, while material at its rear trail behind. Note also the blue star-forming regions at the galaxy’s bow. The ram pressure is also apparently causing more star formation in this part of the galaxy compared to elsewhere.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

5 comments

  • Alex Andrite

    ~900 million beautiful light years away.

    900 Million. LIGHT YEARS.

    I wonder where it is now.

    oh well, back to my bbq.

  • Andi

    “I wonder where it is now”

    Einstein had some interesting arguments regarding simultaneity, and could claim that where it is now is where it was then.

  • I hate that simultaneity argument. I can’t prove it wrong, but it _feels_ so very wrong. There is a universal “now”! I insist upon it!

    Perhaps a better way of phrasing the question: If one were going to send a probe there (at say 0.25c), where would one aim said probe?

  • markedup2

    Yes, it would be pointless. By the time it got there, wherever “there” might be, it’s entirely likely that human – and even post-human – civilization would have ended. Let alone by the time any information got back to “us”.

  • Star Bird

    The Jupiter 2 is still out there so is the Doomsday Machine

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