What new methods can astronomers develop to image distant galaxies while enabling them to learn about their stars and other celestial objects? This is what a recent study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics hopes to address as a team of researchers evaluated a distant galaxy with a first-of-its-kind imaging method that revealed details not available with existing imaging methods. This study has the potential to help astronomers develop more efficient imaging techniques that could help gain greater understanding into the formation and evolution of distant galaxies and whether they could potentially have life as we know it.
For the study, the researchers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to image the Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253), which is a spiral galaxy located just over 11 million light-years from Earth with a diameter estimated to be approximately 120,500 light-years across. For context, our Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to be approximately 105,700 light-years across. Using a new imaging technique, the researchers successfully captured more than one thousand colors that identified specific celestial objects like 500 planetary nebulae, which are responsible for the formation and evolution of stars like our own.
Detailed image of the Sculptor Galaxy. (Credit: ESO/E. Congiu et al.)
"Galaxies are incredibly complex systems that we are still struggling to understand," said Dr. Enrico Congiu, who is an ESO Research Fellow and lead author of the study. “The Sculptor Galaxy is in a sweet spot. It is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible detail, but at the same time, big enough that we can still see it as a whole system.”
Going forward, the researchers aspire to extract even more data from this imaging technique, including the behavior of gases throughout the galaxy and what this could mean for the formation and evolution of stars and planets.
What new galaxy imaging methods will astronomers create in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Astronomy and Astrophysics, EurekAlert!
