Posts Tagged ‘elliptical galaxy’
A Giant Fuzzball
NASA, ESA and Michael West (ESO)
Occasionally, I find huge furballs tucked away in the far corners of my house. They sit all by themselves, alone, after rolling around gathering up other furballs and assorted smaller pieces of fuzz. Like my huge fuzzballs, ESO 306–17 dominates its area of the universe. Explore the image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and you’ll see plenty of other galaxies. Count up all those spiral galaxies. Those galaxies, however, are either farther away or, like the two bright galaxies at the bottom of the image, much closer than the giant elliptical galaxy.
Spidery Filaments
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Spidery filaments of gas reach out from elliptical galaxy NGC 1275. NGC 1275 is one of the closest giant elliptical galaxies and lies in the heart of the Perseus Cluster of galaxies. The galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its core. Sometimes this monster black hole blows huge bubbles of radio-wave emitting material into the surrounding space. This creates a lacy network of gas and dust. The red tendrils are visible to our eyes but there is more to be seen with telescopes that see into the X-ray range of light.
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The ancient peoples saw pictures in the sky. From those patterns in the heavens, ancient storytellers created legends about heroes, maidens, dragons, bears, centaurs, dogs and mythical creatures…Read More
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