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Dark clouds of gas and dust bring out a sense of storminess in this region of active star formation in the elliptical galaxy Centaurus A, located 11 million light years from Earth.
The composite image was made with the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope, which spans wavelengths from ultraviolet through near infrared to reveal the vibrant glow of young, blue star clusters in regions normally obscured by dust.
The dustiness and warped shape of Centaurus A are evidence of a past collision and merger with another galaxy. Such smashups cause hydrogen gas clouds to compress, triggering a firestorm of star formation. These regions are visible as the red patches in this image, according on an image advisory.
The galaxy also harbors a supermassive black hole at its nucleus that ejects jets of high speed gas into space. Neither the supermassive black hole or the jets is visible in this image.
More about Centaurus A and galactic mergers:
- Giant cannibal galaxy caught in mid-gobble
- Snapshot reveals a black hole's jets
- Monster black holes result of galaxies' collision
- Hubble photo shows stretched out galaxy
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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I wish these pictures were wallpaper sized! : )
Eh, since I hardly use computers anymore, except at work, its no problem, it might be perfect for my phone, and would compliment the myriad of other space-based wallpapers I have now.
Check on Nasa's site, they may have Hubble wallpaper
here yo, click on the left of the pic for different sizes. Enjoy.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/pr2011018a/
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/wallpaper/
you beat me to it Tony. ;-)
Wow.
Sometimes that's all you can say when you see what Hubble captures.
Agreed. That's always the first word in any case when a Hubble photo comes out.
11 million LY's away?? Looks like a stones throw away. The HST is a marvel that has earned it's place in history.
Oh and the "red patches" are hydrogen alpha regions (Hll regions) of star formation. They are pinky red because that is the wavelength of the light of ionized hydrogen gas in the IR at 656.28 nanometers.
Mo- this looks like the formations are occuring on the perimeter of the cloud - is that the effect of the black hole and are Dm-e halo's evident at this stage?
"Such smashups cause hydrogen gas clouds to compress, triggering a firestorm of star formation." Hence why Protoplanet formation is still unexplainable, one needs same as what forms a " rain drop" some " dust" for coalescence to occur.