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Galaxies Don Mask of Stars in New Spitzer Image



 
 
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Old April 26th 06, 08:38 PM posted to sci.space.news
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Default Galaxies Don Mask of Stars in New Spitzer Image

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Whitney Clavin (818) 354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

News Release: 2006-065 April 26, 2006

Galaxies Don Mask of Stars in New Spitzer Image

A pair of dancing galaxies appears dressed for a cosmic
masquerade in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space
Telescope.

The infrared picture shows what looks like two icy blue
eyes staring through an elaborate, swirling red mask.
These "eyes" are actually the cores of two merging
galaxies, called NGC 2207 and IC 2163, which recently
met and began to twirl around each other.

The "mask" is made up of the galaxies' twisted spiral
arms. Dotted along the arms, like strings of decorative
pearls, are dusty clusters of newborn stars. This is
the first time that clusters of this type, called "beads
on a string" by astronomers, have been seen in NGC
2207 and IC 2163.

"This is the most elaborate case of beading we've seen
in galaxies," said Dr. Debra Elmegreen of Vassar College
in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "They are evenly spaced and sized
along the arms of both galaxies."

Elmegreen is lead author of a paper describing the
Spitzer observations in the May 1 issue of the
Astrophysical Journal. The image can be viewed at

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer

Astronomers say the beads were formed when the galactic
duo first met. "The galaxies shook each other, causing gas
and dust to move around and collect into pockets dense
enough to collapse gravitationally," said Dr. Kartik
Sheth of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Once this material
condensed into thick bead-like clouds, stars of various
sizes began to pop up within them.

Spitzer's infrared camera was able to see the dusty
clouds for the first time because they glow with infrared
light. The hot, young stars housed inside the clouds heat
up the dust, which then radiates at infrared wavelengths.
This dust is false-colored red in the image, while stars
are represented in blue.

The Spitzer data also reveal an unusually bright bead
adorning the left side of the "mask." This dazzling orb
is so packed full of dusty materials that it accounts
for five percent of the total infrared light coming from
both galaxies. Elmegreen's team thinks the central stars
in this dense cluster might have merged to become a black
hole.

Visible-light images of the galaxies show stars located
inside the beads, but the beads themselves are invisible.
In those pictures, the galaxies look more like a set of
owl-like eyes with "feathers" of scattered stars.

NGC 2207 and IC 2163 are located 140 million light-years
away in the Canis Major constellation. The two galaxies
will meld into one in about 500 million years, bringing
their masquerade days to an end.

Other authors of this research include Bruce Elmegreen
of IBM Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y.,
Michele Kaufman of Ohio State University, Columbus;
Curt Struck of Iowa State, Ames; Magnus Thomasson of
Onsala Space Observatory, Sweden; and Elias Brinks of
the University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Spitzer
Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. Science operations are
conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech.
JPL is a division of Caltech. Spitzer's infrared
array camera was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, Greenbelt, Md. The instrument's principal
investigator is Dr. Giovanni Fazio of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

For more information about Spitzer, visit

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer

For more information about NASA and agency programs
on the Web, visit

http://www.nasa.gov/home/

-end-

 




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