The Hubble Space Telescope photographed a really peculiar galaxy called NGC 1487. It was defined an event rather than a celestial object because it’s the result of a merger between two but perhaps even more galaxies that formed something very different. Astronomers are unable to say how many galaxies were involved in the phenomenon nor what they looked like. This merger probably caused the birth of many new giant stars.
An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” describes a research about the so-called “”Smith Cloud” (or “Smith’s Cloud”). It’s a giant cloud of hydrogen which is currently outside of the Milky Way but is heading towards our galaxy at about 1.1 million km/h (almost 700,000 mph). Observations made using the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that it was ejected from the Milky Way galaxy about 70 million years ago and now is coming back.
The OmegaCAM camera mounted on ESO’s VST (VLT Survey Telescope) was used to take a picture of the dwarf galaxy IC 1613. It has the distinction of being really clean, meaning that it contains very little dust while most galaxies contain dust clouds or are even full of it. The very low dust content of IC 1613 allows astronomers to observe its inside and is therefore an excellent target for astronomy and astrophysics studies.
An article published in the journal “Physical Review Letters” offers clues about the link between the internal structure of a galaxy cluster and the dark matter environment surrounding it. The study of dark matter is complex because it can only be done indirectly due to the fact that we can’t detect it directly. Until now, scientists believed that the greater the mass of a cluster the greater the amount of dark matter in its environment. This new research suggests that things are more complicated.
The Hubble Space Telescope was used to capture the details of of the Trumpler 14 open cluster. This is one of the largest groups of stars that are massive and as a consequence very bright in the Milky Way. It’s a young cluster in astronomical terms as its aged is about half a million years. It has a diameter of about six light years and within it about 2,000 stars of very diverse masses were identified.
