March 24 () –
Jets of star-forming gas dripping from the disk of galaxy JW100 like streaks of fresh paint are formed by a process called stripping by drag pressure.
Its resemblance to dangling tentacles led astronomers to refer to JW100 as a “jellyfish” galaxy. JW100 is located more than 800 million light years away, in the constellation Pegasus.and appears lower right in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image.
Stripping by drag pressure occurs when galaxies encounter diffuse gas that invades galaxy clusters. When galaxies pass through this tenuous gas, it acts like a headwind, blowing gas and dust from the galaxy and creating the trailing streamers that grace JW100. The bright elliptical blobs in the image are other galaxies in the cluster that hosts JW100, reports NASA.
Towards the top of this image are two bright spots surrounded by a remarkably bright area of diffuse light. It is the nucleus of IC 5338, the brightest galaxy in the cluster. IC 5338 is an elliptical galaxy with an extended halo, a type of galaxy called a cD galaxy. These galaxies probably grow by consuming smaller galaxies, so it is not uncommon for them to have multiple nuclei, as their nuclei can take a long time to be absorbed. The bright points of light that dot the outer edges of the galaxy are a rich population of globular star clusters.
This observation took advantage of the capabilities of Hubble’s Large Field Camera 3. The data is part of a sequence of observations designed to explore star formation in the tendrils of Medusa galaxies. These tendrils represent star formation under extreme conditions and could help astronomers better understand the process of star formation in other parts of the universe.
