PHOTO OF THE DAY: NASA’s Hubble House Telescope Spots Jellyfish Galaxy with Tendrils of Fuel

NASA & SPACE NEWS

(NASA) – This picture taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble House Telescope reveals JO204, a ‘jellyfish galaxy’ so named for the intense tendrils of fuel that seem on this picture as drifting lazily under JO204’s brilliant central bulk.

The galaxy lies virtually 600 million light-years away within the constellation Sextans. Hubble noticed JO204 as a part of a survey carried out with the intention of higher understanding star formation beneath excessive situations.

Whereas the fragile ribbons of fuel beneath JO204 might appear to be floating jellyfish tentacles, they’re the truth is the result of an intense astronomical course of often known as ram strain stripping.

Ram strain is a selected sort of strain exerted on a physique when it strikes relative to a fluid. An intuitive instance is the feeling of strain you expertise if you find yourself standing in an intense gust of wind – the wind is a shifting fluid, and your physique feels strain from it.

An extension of this analogy is that your physique will stay complete and coherent, however the extra loosely sure issues – like your hair and your garments – will flap within the wind.

The identical is true for jellyfish galaxies. They expertise ram strain due to their motion towards the intergalactic medium that fills the areas between galaxies in a galaxy cluster.

The galaxies expertise intense strain from that motion, and consequently, their extra loosely sure fuel is stripped away.

This fuel is generally the colder and denser fuel within the galaxy – fuel which, when stirred and compressed by the ram strain, collapses and types new stars within the jellyfish’s stunning tendrils.

CLICK HERE FOR BREVARD COUNTY NEWS