The U.S. space agency NASA captured the evolution from an
elliptical spiral galaxy, a finding that will help to understand galaxy
evolution. With help of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer from NASA, the
researchers found how the galaxy NGC 3801 is losing some of the cold gas
inside symptom of this change. It has long been known that gas-rich
spiral galaxies like our Milky Way are contracted to create elliptical
galaxies as observed in the study, with a small population of stars.The
process that guides the great transformation of young galaxies spiral to
elliptical galaxies is the rapid loss of cold gas, which serves as fuel for the
formation of new stars. Experts believe they have found that feature in
the NGC 3801.
"We detected a galaxy in the act of destruction of
gaseous fuel for (creating) new stars," says Ananda Hota, author of
the study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, as
recorded by NASA in a statement.
A finding that the opinion of the astronomer is
the "crucial missing piece to connect and solve the puzzle of this
phase of galaxy evolution."
The researchers used the Galaxy Evolution Explorer to
determine the age of the stars of the galaxy and decipher their evolutionary
history.
The ultraviolet observations show that star formation in
NGC 3801 was exhausted in the last 100 to 500 million years, which
shows that the galaxy has left behind years young and has begun the
transformation.
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