Wealthy with element, the spiral galaxy NGC 1309 shines on this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope picture. NGC 1309 is about 100 million light-years away within the constellation Eridanus.
This gorgeous Hubble picture encompasses NGC 1309’s bluish stars, darkish brown fuel clouds, and pearly-white core, in addition to tons of of distant background galaxies. Practically each smudge, streak, and blob of sunshine on this picture is a person galaxy, some shining via much less dense areas of NGC 1309 itself. The one exception to this extragalactic ensemble is a star close to the highest of the body recognized by its diffraction spikes. The star is positively neighborly at only a few thousand light-years away within the Milky Approach galaxy.
Hubble turned its consideration towards NGC 1309 a number of instances; earlier Hubble photographs of this galaxy had been launched in 2006 and 2014. A lot of NGC 1309’s scientific curiosity derives from two supernovae, SN 2002fk in 2002 and SN 2012Z in 2012. SN 2002fk was an ideal instance of a Kind Ia supernova, which occurs when the stripped-down core of a useless star (a white dwarf) explodes.
SN 2012Z, then again, was a little bit of a renegade. It was categorized as a Kind Iax supernova: whereas its spectrum resembled that of a Kind Ia supernova, the explosion wasn’t as vivid as anticipated. Hubble observations showed that on this case, the supernova didn’t destroy the white dwarf fully, abandoning a ‘zombie star’ that shone even brighter than it did earlier than the explosion. Hubble observations of NGC 1309 taken throughout a number of years additionally made this the primary time astronomers noticed a star system that later produced an uncommon supernova explosion of a white dwarf.
Textual content Credit score: ESA/Hubble
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD