A giant explosion occurs in a galaxy close to the Milky Way, dumping the equivalent of about 50 million suns into its surroundings. Astronomers have mapped this galactic pollution event at high resolution, gaining important clues about how the space between galaxies becomes filled with chemical elements that eventually become the building blocks of new stars.
The discovery was made while an international team was studying NGC 4383, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma, using a Very Large Telescope (VLT) instrument called the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE).
NGC 4383, about 62 million light-years away from Earth, is part of the Virgo star cluster and is undergoing a strange and turbulent evolution. This includes gas ejected by the galaxy in such quantities that it extends across 20,000 light-years of space. This jet of gas, which contains large amounts of hydrogen and heavier elements, travels at speeds of up to 671,000 miles per hour. For context, that’s about 450 times the top speed of a Lockheed Martin F-16 jet fighter.
related: Hubble just witnessed a massive intergalactic explosion, and astronomers can’t explain it
“The physics of capital outflows and their properties are poorly understood because they are difficult to detect,” Adam Watts, a researcher at the University of Western Australia who led the research team, said in a statement. elements, giving us a unique understanding of the complex process of mixing hydrogen and metals in the outflow gas.”
Watts explained that in the gas flowing out of NGC 4383, he and his team detected oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and many other chemical elements.
In short, these outflows were crucial to the evolution of the universe. The elements they spew into interstellar space will become the building blocks of the next generation of stars, planets, moons, and perhaps even the basis for the creatures that one day inhabit these worlds.
The team believes that the massive outflow of gas from this relatively nearby galaxy is the result of a powerful stellar explosion at the center of NGC 4383. The most massive stars produced in this starburst lose mass during their lifetimes due to powerful stellar winds. Millions of years later, stars like this die in violent supernova explosions.
Both stellar winds and supernova explosions drag out a galaxy’s gas and dust, depleting its gas reservoirs. Because this reservoir provides the basis for new stars, this depletion slows and eventually stops star formation in galaxies experiencing this phenomenon.
In the VLT/MUSE image of the galactic fountain of NGC 4383, this outflow of material can be seen as bright red filaments emanating from the galaxy’s main central body.
The team’s findings represent the first results from the MUSE and ALMA Revealing the Virgo Environment (MAUVE) survey.
“We designed MAUVE to study how physical processes such as gas outflow help prevent star formation in galaxies. NGC 4383 was our first target because we suspected something very interesting was going on, but the data exceeded our expectations, ”Catinella concluded. “We hope that future MAUVE observations will reveal in exquisite detail the importance of gas outflows in the local universe.”
The team’s research results were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on April 22.
#Cosmic #fountains #polluting #interstellar #space #equivalent #million #suns
Image Source : www.space.com