The Hubble Space Telescope has reeled in a titanic cosmic jellyfish.
The celestial sea creature is definitely the jellyfish galaxy JO206, which is positioned around 700 million light-years from Earth, fittingly within the constellation of Aquarius, the water bearer.
The Hubble image shows the major body of JO206 as a colourful disk surrounded by a hazy cloud of growing dust. Tendrils of fabric, very similar to the tendrils of the ocean creature from which its name is derived, trail the galaxy.
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The jellyfish galaxy is seen afloat in an inky black sea punctuated by stars. The spiral galaxy is angled toward Earth and Hubble in order that it’s “face-on” in relation to our planet, allowing it to be seen in stunning detail.
Jellyfish galaxies like JO206 are present in galaxy clusters, they usually are characterised by the distinctive trails of gas which might be ripped from them as they force their way through material that lies between galaxies in these conglomerations, officially called the “intracluster medium.” This implies there’s rather more to the anatomical features of JO206 than may initially meet the attention.
Because the spiral galaxy JO206 swims through the superheated intracluster medium, gas is pulled from the faint cloud of fabric across the galaxy and forms quite a few thin arms. This causes intense bouts of star formation called starbursts within the tendrils.
Studying these regions subsequently offers astronomers the prospect to watch star formation in extreme and violent conditions, away from the influence of the major disk of a galaxy.
Hubble observations have led to the surprising revelation that star formation within the trailing tendrils of JO206 is proceeding in mostly the identical way because it does within the galaxy’s major body, mission team members said. This suggests that, in jellyfish galaxies, star birth is not strongly influenced by the environment of newly born stars.
The image of JO206 is the sixth and last in an observing campaign by Hubble that has seen it reel in six jellyfish galaxies for astronomers to analyze over the past two years.
