Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
Despite its unassuming appearance, the edge-on spiral galaxy captured
in the left half of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is
actually quite remarkable.
Located about one billion light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus, this striking galaxy — known as LO95 0313-192
— has a spiral shape similar to that of the Milky Way. It has a large
central bulge, and arms speckled with brightly glowing gas mottled by
thick lanes of dark dust. Its companion, sitting pretty in the right of
the frame, is known rather unpoetically as [LOY2001] J031549.8-190623.
Jets,
outbursts of superheated gas moving at close to the speed of light,
have long been associated with the cores of giant elliptical galaxies,
and galaxies in the process of merging. However, in an unexpected
discovery, astronomers found LO95 0313-192 to have intense radio jets
spewing out from its centre! The galaxy appears to have two more regions
that are also strongly emitting in the radio part of the spectrum,
making it even rarer still.
The discovery of these giant jets in 2003 — not visible in this image, but indicated in this earlier Hubble composite
— has been followed by the unearthing of a further three spiral
galaxies containing radio-emitting jets in recent years. This growing
class of unusual spirals continues to raise significant questions about
how jets are produced within galaxies, and how they are thrown out into
the cosmos.
Source: ESA/Hubble - Space Telescope
