Hubble spots a celestial ‘cannonball’

Oct. 25 () –

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of IC 3225, a galaxy that looks like it was launched from a cannon and moves at full speed like a comet with a gas tail.

According to NASAAppearances can be deceiving with objects so far from Earth (IC 3225 is about 100 million light years away), but the galaxy’s location suggests some causes for this active scene, because IC 3225 is one of the most of 1,300 members of the Virgo galaxy cluster.

The density of galaxies in the Virgo cluster creates a rich field of hot gas between them, called the “intracluster medium”, while the extreme mass of the cluster causes its galaxies to rotate around its center in very fast orbits. The impact through the dense intracluster medium, especially near the center of the cluster, It exerts enormous “shock pressure” on moving galaxies, stripping them of gas as they move.

As a galaxy moves through space, the gas and dust that make up the intracluster medium create resistance to the galaxy’s motion, putting pressure on it. This pressure, called impact pressure, can strip a galaxy of its star-forming gas and dust, reducing or even stopping the creation of new stars.

Conversely, impact pressure can also cause other parts of the galaxy to compress, what can drive star formation. IC 3225 is not that close to the cluster core at the moment, but astronomers have deduced that it has suffered impact pressure detachment in the past. The galaxy appears compressed on one side, with noticeably more star formation on that leading edge (bottom left), while the opposite end is stretched and deformed (top right).

Being in such a crowded field, a close encounter with another galaxy may also have pulled IC 3225 and created this shape. The sight of this distorted galaxy is a reminder of the incredible forces at work on an astronomical scale. and that can move and reshape entire galaxies.