In research published online on June 18th in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Journal, astronomers achieved a groundbreaking milestone by capturing the most intricate image of a galaxy to date. The photographs of the Sculptor Galaxy, also known as the NGC 253, located around 11 million light-years away, showcase the galactic system in thousands of colors, a feat in sharp contrast with the normal galaxy pictures which contain only a handful. Astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) instrument called the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to observe the galaxy for over 50 hours and stitched together more than 100 exposures, covering an area of 65,000 light-years within the galaxy which spreads 90,000 light-years wide. By mapping the galaxy at thousands of wavelengths, the team was able to analyze the age, composition, and motion of the stars, gas, and dust in the Sculptor Galaxy
with extraordinary precision.
According to team leader Enrico Congiu of the Universidad de Chile, “The Sculptor Galaxy is in a sweet spot. It is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible detail, but at the same time, big enough that we can still see it as a whole system." The image can not only be zoomed in to study regions where stars form at the same scale of an individual star, but also zoomed out to study the entire galaxy. Through an initial examination, scientists have already been able to identify about 500 new planetary nebulae, which are shells of gas and dust that are ejected by dying stars, a detection that is incredibly rare outside our own Milky Way and its immediate neighbors. Beyond our galactic neighborhood, we usually deal with fewer than 100 detections per galaxy, stressed team member and Heidelberg University researcher Fabian Scheuermann, regarding the importance of this discovery. These planetary nebulae serve as vital markers for measuring the galaxy’s distance which is crucial for further studies into its structure and evolution. This new image, along with showcasing the beauty of galaxies, also provides scientists with a comprehensive map of the Sculptor Galaxy’s life cycle. Further projects using the map will reportedly explore how gas flows and changes composition while forming stars across this galaxy.
Prior to this, the most detailed observation of the Sculptor Galaxy was in 1998, recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy has been observed many times since, and can be seen with
binoculars in ideal conditions.
This Article was authored by Rishima Mosali, Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune, Intern at Deccan Chronicle