This epic image revealing a coiled galaxy 50 million light-years away shows just how beautiful – and intriguing – our universe is.
Spiral-shaped like our Milky Way, the eye-like object at its centre is a monstrous black hole about 100 million times the mass of our sun.
Our Milky Way’s central black hole is tame by comparison, with a mass of a few million suns.
In this color-coded infrared view taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope, the area around the invisible black hole is blue and the white ring is where new stars are forming.
‘The ring itself is a fascinating object worthy of study because it is forming stars at a very high rate,’ said Kartik Sheth, an astronomer at NASA’s Spitzer Science Center. Sheth and Helou are part of a team that made the observations.
The fuzzy blue dot to the left, which appears to fit snuggly between the arms, is a companion galaxy.
‘The companion galaxy that looks as if it’s playing peek-a-boo through the larger galaxy could have plunged through, poking a hole,’ said Helou. ‘But we don’t know this for sure. It could also just happen to be aligned with a gap in the arms.’
Other dots in the picture are either nearby stars in our galaxy, or distant galaxies.
The galaxy’s red spiral arms and the swirling spokes seen between the arms show dust heated by newborn stars. Older populations of stars scattered through the galaxy are blue – because their infra-red light has shorter wavelengths.
Acum ştim unde vor locui stră-stră-stră… şi continuă mult strănepoţii noştri.