A strange cosmic explosion has been captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. In a new image taken by the observatory, the dwarf galaxy NGC 1705 can be seen shining against a backdrop of shimmering light and among red clouds.
Located in the constellation Pictor, 17 million light-years from Earth, the tiny galaxy has been described by the European Space Agency (ESA) as a “cosmic monster”. That’s because it’s small, irregularly shaped, and recently suffered an unusual stellar “birth explosion,” which astronomers call a “starburst.”
Irregular dwarf galaxies tend to contain few elements other than hydrogen or helium, and are considered similar to early galaxies in the Universe.
The galaxy NGC 1705 was already seen by the Hubble telescope in 1999
The data shown in the image comes from a series of observations designed to unravel the interaction between stars, star clusters and ionized gas in nearby galaxies.
By observing a specific wavelength of light known as H-alpha with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, astronomers set out to discover thousands of emission nebulae – regions created when hot young stars bathe the gas clouds surrounding them in the ultraviolet, causing them to glow.
This is not the first time that NGC 1705 has been captured by Hubble. In 1999, astronomers examined the galaxy’s core using Hubble’s working camera at the time, the Wide Field Planetry Camera 2, an instrument that was replaced by the Wide Field Camera 3.
The replacement took place during Hubble’s fifth and final face-to-face mission in 2009, and the new instrument, transported to the observatory via NASA’s Space Shuttle, has now provided a richer and much more detailed portrait of the galaxy NGC 1705 than the previous one. 1. previous observation.
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