This galaxy was born from the merger of two galaxies, an event that began about a billion years ago.
It hides at its center two of the closest supermassive black holes ever discovered. The two celestial objects are spiraling closer together and will merge within 250 million years to form an even more massive black hole.
Fusion dance
It is not uncommon for galaxies to enter a cosmic dance and end up merging. Our Milky Way and its neighbor Andromeda will meet this fate in about 4.5 billion years, show work carried out from data collected by the European satellite Gaia.
In a galactic collision, individual stars do not usually collide because the distances between them remain very large on a cosmic scale.
But the gravity of two galaxies which dance
between them creates tidal forces that dramatically change the appearance of both partners. Thus, it is possible to see tails
of stars, gas and dust swirling around them as they eventually form a new merged galaxy.
It is this disorderly and asymmetrical shape that can be observed, a consequence of the cosmic shock that created NGC 7727.
The image published by ESO was obtained using the FORS2 instrument (FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2) you TGT.
While the galaxy had previously been imaged by another ESO telescope, this new image shows more intricate detail in both the galaxy’s main body and the faint tails surrounding it.
notes the ESO in a press release.
In the picture it is possible to see7727. Parts of these arms are dotted with stars, which appear here as bright blue-purple dots.”,”text”:”the tangled trails created when the two galaxies merged, stripping each other stars and dust to create the dramatic long arms that surround NGC7727. Parts of these arms are dotted with stars, which appear here as bright blue-purple dots.”}}”>the tangled trails created when the two galaxies merged, stripping each other of stars and dust to create the dramatic long arms that surround NGC 7727. Parts of these arms are studded with stars, which appear here like blue-violet luminous points.
It is very likely that the galaxy that will result from the merger of our Milky Way and Andromeda will look like NGC 7727.
Landmarks
- No less than 2000 billion galaxies populate the Universe, according to estimates by British astrophysicists.
- Black holes are celestial objects that possess extremely large mass in a very small volume and whose gravitational field strength prevents any form of matter or radiation from escaping.
- There are four types of black holes, including supermassives, which are found at the center of most galaxies, and stellar black holes, which are formed during the gravitational collapse of certain massive stars at the end of their lives. explode as a supernova.
A sombre duo
The presence of two bright spots at the center of the galaxy is another clue to the galaxy’s checkered past. The core of NGC 7727 is still made up of the original two galactic cores, each of which houses a supermassive black hole
add it ESO.
These black holes are located about 89 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius. This is the pair of black holes closest to our planet. Also, they are only 1600 light years away in the sky. When they merge, they will form an even more massive black hole.
The arrival of ESO’s European Giant Telescope in 2025 is expected to further investigate hidden supermassive black hole pairs and could lead to new discoveries.