Starry Critters

Starry Bug

by CritterKeeper on Feb.03, 2010, under Bugs, birds and other animals

Credit: NASA & ESA

Float­ing like a bug under a micro­scope, I Zwicky 18 is an odd-looking galaxy. Astronomers pre­vi­ously thought this pecu­liar galaxy was very young because it resem­bles galax­ies typ­i­cally found in the early uni­verse. But images from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope show older stars within the galaxy lead­ing sci­en­tists to update their ideas. They now believe I Zwicky 18 was born about the same time as the Milky Way Galaxy and the Androm­eda Galaxy.

Explore the image of this dwarf irreg­u­lar galaxy. It is much smaller than the Milky Way and has more in com­mon with the Mag­el­lanic Clouds. Look for the knots of blue-white stars. New stars are form­ing at furi­ous rates within these star­burst regions. Bub­bles of wispy blue gas sur­round the star­burst areas. Super­novae and strong solar winds from the new stars blow away gas and dust form­ing these wispy bub­bles. Intense ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion causes the whole star cloud to glow. In addi­tion to the new, blue-white stars, look for red­dish stars in I Zwicky 18 and the com­pan­ion galaxy nearby. These red­dish stars are more than 10 bil­lion years old; more than twice the age of our own Sun. The com­pan­ion galaxy may be tug­ging on I Zwicky 18 and caus­ing the recent star formation.

Far­ther away in this image, you can see ancient fully-formed ellip­ti­cal galax­ies as well as edge-on and face-on spi­ral galax­ies. I Zwicky 18 is about 60 mil­lion light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion of Ursa Major the Great Bear.

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