If you’ve never seen a galaxy with tentacles, now is your chance.
We know little about the millions and millions of galaxies that surround us, but we do know some general characteristics about their formation and composition. Recently, thanks to the information published on the NASA website, we have had the opportunity to see with our own eyes type of galaxy that is not usual to be able to observe and which receives the name of jellyfish galaxy. Below we explain the reason for its name and we tell you what we know about this interesting discovery by the NASA space telescope.
Galaxies scattered throughout the cosmos, with shapes and characteristics that show their composition
The galaxy that the Hubble telescope shows us in one of his latest tweets has been called JW100 and is the protagonist of a snapshot that invites us to tell you what is special about these jellyfish galaxies and how they were formed. According to information published by the North American space agency, those gas threads that can be observed in the disk of the galaxy are formed by a process called drag pressure and which implies that the gas which is contained in it is being releasedgranting the curious way of being marine.
Welcome to the galaxy JW100.
Located about 800 million light-years away, it resides in the constellation Pegasus.
Seen at the lower right of this #HubbleFriday image, JW100 is known as a jellyfish galaxy because of its “tendrils” of star-forming gas: https://t.co/KH5cenAMNv pic.twitter.com/LTsee4Q4eY
—Hubble (@NASAHubble) March 24, 2023
That is why astronomers, when they observe a galaxy with this type of process underway, have coined the term jellyfish, since we can see how the gas seems to behave as if it were the still wet paint of a painting. In the case of JW100we are talking about a jellyfish galaxy that is located 800 million light years from our position and which is framed within the constellation pegasus. Since galaxies are often grouped together, we can say that the rest of elliptical compositions of the image are also galaxies of the same group.
Since the very origin of the universe, cosmic gas and dust tend to come together to form stars, planets and other celestial bodies. In addition, the conjunction of several of them show us how the galaxies are formed and we can observe them thanks, in this case, to the Wide Field Camera 3 of the telescope hubble. Looking for the way in which stars are created in these jellyfish galaxies, we have been able to witness one of them, being able to understand more one of the most complicated star formation processes in the cosmos.
Founder Dwight D Eisenhower Foundation date 07-29-1958 Alternative name National Aeronautics and Space Administration Number of employees 18000