NASA's Hubble Traces 'String of Pearls' Star Clusters in Galaxy Collisions
Summary
Long Trail of Clumpy Stars Follows Galaxy Interactions
When galaxies go bump in the night, they cook up new generations of stars that might otherwise have never been born. These close encounters between galaxies cause a gravitational tug-of-war, and gas and dust are drawn out into large streamers. The Hubble Space Telescope's vision is so sharp that it can see clusters of newborn stars strung along these tidal tails. They form when knots of gas gravitationally collapse to create about 1 million newborn stars per cluster. These "string of pearls" features are probably more common in the early universe when galaxies collided more frequently.
Full Article
Contrary to what you might think, galaxy collisions do not destroy stars. In fact, the rough-and-tumble dynamics trigger new generations of stars, and presumably accompanying planets. Now NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has homed in on 12 interacting galaxies that have long, tadpole-like tidal tails of gas, dust, and a plethora of stars. Hubble's exquisite sharpness and sensitivity to ultraviolet light have uncovered 425 clusters of newborn stars along these tails, looking like strings of holiday lights. Each cluster contains as many as 1 million blue, newborn stars. Clusters in tidal tails ...Visit NASA Science to view the full news release including article text and associated Hubble imagery, graphics, scientific visualizations, videos, captions, text descriptions, and other information.
News releases highlighting the discoveries of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are produced for NASA by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, under NASA Contract NAS5-26555. News release content is developed by the News Team in STScI’s Office of Public Outreach.
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