June 6 () –
This image shows a galaxy called Messier 85, Captured in all its delicate, misty splendor by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Messier 85 tilts across the constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair) and lies about 50 million light-years from Earth. It was first discovered by Charles Messier’s colleague Pierre Méchain in 1781 and is included in Messier’s catalog of celestial objects.
Messier 85 is intriguing: its properties lie between those of a lenticular galaxy and an elliptical one, and appears to be interacting with two of its neighbours: the spiral NGC 4394, located out of frame at upper left, and the small elliptical MCG 3-32-38, located out of frame at bottom center.
The galaxy contains about 400 billion stars, most of which are very old.. However, the central region is home to a population of relatively young stars only a few billion years old; These stars are thought to have formed in a late burst of star formation, probably triggered when Messier 85 merged with another galaxy more than four billion years ago. reports NASA.
Messier 85 has another potentially strange quality. Almost all galaxies are believed to have a supermassive black hole at their center, but based on measurements of the velocities of the stars in this galaxy, it is not clear if Messier 85 contains such a black hole.
This image combines infrared, visible, and ultraviolet observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.
