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Saturday, August 18, 2012

Hubble captures a stunning image of the brightest galaxy


The Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of a spiral galaxy with bars that can help understand the Milky Way.
Most of the known spiral galaxies fall into this category of "slash" - which is defined by its pronounced structure bars across their centers.
The existence of this structure can indicate the age of the galaxy.
Two thirds of the nearest galaxies are young and bar, while only a fifth of the oldest and most distant have it.
The new image is a milestone in the long history of the Hubble Space Telescope in the stunning astronomical imaging.

Bright galaxy
It is the brightest galaxy discovered so far, thanks to a device known as gravitational lensing.
This gravitational lensing occurs when the gravity of a massive object such as the Sun, a black hole or an entire galaxy, causing a curvature in space-time.
"The gravitational lens shows how galaxies evolved from ten thousand million years"
NASA researcher
The light from distant objects and bright and magnificent flexes when crossing the region disturbed by gravity.
At the top left of the image is a cluster reflecting recent star formation only viewable Hubble cameras.
The U.S. space agency said that "this observation provides a unique opportunity to study the physical properties of a galaxy that is so vigorous, stars when the universe was only a third of its present age."
Evolution of galaxies
Hubble's view of the distant galaxy obtained is much more detailed image that would have been obtained without the presence of a gravitational lens. This lens shows how galaxies evolved from 10,000 million years ago, according to NASA.
While the nearest galaxies to Earth are fully mature and approaching the end of its history as a nursery of stars, distant galaxies provide testimony to the times of formation of the universe.
The most distant galaxies fainter shine not only in space but are much smaller.

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