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Astronomers utilizing ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) in Chile have actually caught a sensational picture of the distorted spiral nebula NGC 3312.
This VST image reveals the spiral nebula NGC 3312. Image credit: ESO/ INAF/ M. Spavone/ E. Iodice.
NGC 3312 lies more than 160 million light-years from us in the constellation of Hydra.
Understood as ESO 501-43, IC 629, IRAS 10346-2718 or LEDA 31513, it was found by the English astronomer John Herschel on March 26, 1835.
NGC 3312 is the biggest spiral nebula in the Hydra I Cluster (Abell 1060), a galaxy cluster which contains over 150 intense galaxies.
The galaxy is losing cold gas as it moves through the hot gas within the cluster.
It was most likely misshaped by NGC 3309 and NGC 3311, which are the dominant elliptical galaxies in the cluster.
“This spiral nebula, right at the center of this VST image, looks nearly smeared throughout the screen, spilling its contents into the universes around it,” the ESO astronomers stated in a declaration.
“This is NGC 3312, coming down with an astrophysical break-in: ram-pressure removing.”
“This takes place when a galaxy moves through a thick fluid, like the hot gas suspended in between galaxies in a cluster,” they described.
“This hot gas drags versus the cooler gas on the external shell of the galaxy, pulling it off of the galaxy and triggering it to leakage into the universes.”
“This cold gas is the raw product out of which stars kind, indicating galaxies losing gas by doing this run the risk of a diminishing excellent population.”
“Affected galaxies– normally those falling under the center of clusters– tend to ultimately form long tendrils of gas routing behind them, causing their label: jellyfish galaxies.”
“This is simply among the numerous huge procedures that make images of deep space so differed and fascinating.”
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