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NASA's Hubble Surveys Gigantic Galaxy

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January 05, 2020 3:15PM (EST)Release ID: 2020-01
Slightly oblique view of a spiral galaxy with a glowing yellow central core and two spiral arms that wind clockwise from the center. The arms consist of dark reddish-brown dust trails that are vein-like and hazy clouds of blue stars. The outer regions of the galaxy appear bluer, with bright clusters of blue stars sparsely lining the outer edges of the spiral arms. There are a few foreground stars that have bright white or blue cores with colorful fuzzy halos and four diffraction spikes radiating from their centers. Scattered across the dark background are thousands of faint objects that vary in size, shape, and color. Most appear as small dots, ovals, or lines in different shades of orange, red, and blue.

Summary

Majestic Spiral Has Slowly Grown Over Billions of Years

Galaxies are like snowflakes. Though the universe contains innumerable galaxies flung across time and space, no two ever look alike. One of the most photogenic is the huge spiral galaxy UGC 2885, located 232 million light-years away in the northern constellation, Perseus. It's a whopper even by galactic standards. The galaxy is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains 10 times as many stars, about 1 trillion. This galaxy has lived a quiescent life by not colliding with other large galaxies. It has gradually bulked up on intergalactic hydrogen to make new stars at a slow and steady pace over many billions of years. The galaxy has been nicknamed "Rubin's galaxy," after astronomer Vera Rubin (1928 – 2016). Rubin used the galaxy to look for invisible dark matter. The galaxy is embedded inside a vast halo of dark matter. The amount of dark matter can be estimated by measuring its gravitational influence on the galaxy's rotation rate.

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Full Article

This majestic spiral galaxy might earn the nickname the "Godzilla Galaxy" because it may be the largest known in the local universe. The galaxy, UGC 2885, is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains 10 times as many stars. But it is a "gentle giant," say researchers, because it looks like it has been sitting quietly over billions of years, possibly sipping hydrogen from the filamentary structure of intergalactic space. This fuels modest ongoing star birth at half the rate of our Milky Way. In fact, its supermassive central black hole is a sleeping giant, too; because the galaxy does not ...

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