European Space Agency's
Herschel telescope captured rare images of the creation of a massive galaxy
which is 10 times bigger than the Milky Way that was formed when two young
galaxies collided 11 billion years ago in a research.
What
is Herschel telescope?
The William Herschel
Telescope is a 4.20 m (165 in) near-infrared reflecting telescope which is
situated at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos in the canary islands
on the island of La Palma. The telescope is a part of the Isaac Newton Group of
Telescopes which is named after William Herschel. Frederick William Herschel
was a British astronomer, and he was born in Hanover, Germany. Astronomers use
the William Herschel Telescope to conduct scientific research across most
branches of observational astronomy. The WHT has made many discover such as,
the first evidence of a super massive black hole (Sgr A*) at the centre of the
Milky Way (in 1995) and the first optical observation of a gamma-ray burst (GRB
970228) (in 1997).
"Capturing the creation of this type of
large, short-lived star body is extremely rare - the equivalent of discovering
a missing link between winged dinosaurs and early birds," scientists from
the University of California, Irvine (UCI) who discovered this told it in a
statement.
The researcher, Julie
Wardlow, "noticed an amazing, bright blob" that stood out among the
"carpets of galaxies" that Herschel recorded.
Hai Fu, a postdoctoral
researcher at UCI and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature
told that "This monster system of interacting galaxies is the most
efficient star-forming factory ever found in the universe at a time when it was
only three billion years old,"
The other telescopes like
NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, confirmed that two galaxies,
"located about 11 billion light-years from Earth, during a time when our
universe was about three billion years old", were "intertwined and
furiously making stars" at a rate of about 2,000 stars a year, NASA told
in a statement.
"It was long assumed
that the large elliptical galaxies seen in the universe today built up
gradually over time via the gravitational acquisition of many small dwarf
galaxies," said by the European Space Agency.
Discovery of this
mega-galaxy will help to explore on an astronomical mystery that scientists
have working on for years galaxies formed in the early universe.
Most large galaxies are
either spirals that are full of gas, like the Milky Way, or elliptical,
populated by old cool red stars and showing few signs of ongoing star formation.
When the collision of the two galaxies happened the universe was just three to
four billion years old.
However, this discovery
brings an era to the research of galaxies formed in the early universe.
About the Author
Aranyak Ghosh is a blogger from Kolkata, India. Apart from Blogging, he loves to watch action movies, and football games. He mainly writes about social media affairs and recent changes in technological world.
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