Galaxy celebrates star-birth; NASA's Hubble captures skyrocket-like display! - See pic

Image courtesy: NASA/ESA/D. Elmegreen (Vassar College)

New Delhi: Fireworks are an integral part of any celebration, be it a festival or a wedding. They light up the night skies and make the view starry and beautiful.

However, NASA's Hubble space telescope has beamed back an image showing a nearby galaxy in space that seems to be having its own celebrations.

The galaxy has been captured displaying a spectacular fireworks display that “resembles a July 4th skyrocket,” says NASA.

The diminutive galaxy, known as Kiso 5639, is a dwarf galaxy in which a star birth lighting up its one end, was captured by Hubble.

As per NASA, the galaxy is shaped like a flattened pancake, but because it is tilted edge-on, it resembles a skyrocket, with a brilliant blazing head and a long, star-studded tail.

According to astronomers, the frenzied star birth is sparked by intergalactic gas raining on one end of the galaxy as it drifts through space.

NASA also quoted lead researcher Debra Elmegreen of Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York, who said that, “I think Kiso 5639 is a beautiful, up-close example of what must have been common long ago. The current thinking is that galaxies in the early universe grow from accreting gas from the surrounding neighborhood. It’s a stage that galaxies, including our Milky Way, must go through as they are growing up.”

The American space agency further reported that, Elmegreen used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to conduct a detailed imaging study of Kiso 5639. The images in different filters reveal information about an object by dissecting its light into its component colors. Hubble’s crisp resolution helped Elmegreen and her team analyze the giant star-forming clumps in Kiso 5639 and determine the masses and ages of the star clusters.