Messier85_-_HST_-_Potw1905a.jpg
Summary
Description Messier85 - HST - Potw1905a.jpg |
The darkness within?
Messier 85 is intriguing — its properties lie somewhere between those of a lenticular and an elliptical galaxy, and it appears to be interacting with two of its neighbours: the beautiful spiral NGC 4394, located out of frame to the upper left, and the small elliptical MCG 3-32-38, located out of frame to the centre bottom. The galaxy contains some 400 billion stars, most of which are very old. However, the central region hosts a population of relatively young stars of just a few billion years in age; these stars are thought to have formed in a late burst of star formation, likely triggered as Messier 85 merged with another galaxy over four billion years ago. Messier 85 has a further potentially strange quality. Almost every galaxy is thought to have a supermassive black hole at its centre, but from measurements of the velocities of stars in this galaxy, it is unclear whether Messier 85 contains such a black hole. This image combines infrared, visible and ultraviolet observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. O'Connell Coordinates Position (RA): 12 25 24.00 Position (Dec): 18° 11' 16.55" Field of view: 2.55 x 2.69 arcminutes Orientation: North is 0.1° right of vertical Colours & filters Band Wavelength Telescope Optical u 336 nm Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 Optical B 438 nm Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 Optical V 555 nm Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 Optical I 814 nm Hubble Space Telescope WFC3. |
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Date | 4 February 2019, 06:00 (Release) | |||
Source | https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1905a/ https://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/images/large/potw1905a.jpg | |||
Author | Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. O'Connell | |||
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