Published on October 22, 2014
LatestSpaceNews.com Staff Writer Adam Horton
Resembling a "Charkram" weapon that was used by Vikings from the past, or a spoked wagon wheel, Galaxy NGC 1291 the ringed galaxy holds millions if not tens of millions of interstellar stars. NGC 1291 is relatively an older galaxy, a vast pool of stellar life. The barred galaxy is roughly 12 million years old but shows signs of an unusual ring that seems to be triggering the formation of new stars.
In the image above, NASA's Spitzer assigned shorter-wavelengths of infrared light in blue, and longer-wavelengths light in red. If you look closely at the central bulge, the stars appear blue. This region of the bulge is relatively older and most of the gasses need for star formation were used up by earlier in the galaxies life.
Kartik Sheth of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) of Charlottesville said "The rest of the galaxy is done maturing, but the outer ring is just now starting to light up with stars." Sheth and his colleagues are trying to better understand how bars of stars in galaxies like NGC 1291 shape the destinies of similar type barred galaxies.
The Possibilities Of Finding A Barred Galaxy With Spitzer
The current hypothesis is that almost two-thirds of barred galaxies
should contain a bar shaped stellar star nursery. The creation of the bar is thought to be the results of a density wave radiating outward, effecting the reshaping the orbit of the inner stars. Over time, the repeated reshaping spreads further outward and effects other stars, causing the self-perpetuating bar like structure in the center.
Through a program called Spitzer Survey Of Stellar Structures In Galaxies, Sheth and his scientific team have been busy analyzing more than 3,000 local galaxies as far out as 120 million light-years from Earth. They want to know how many of the local galaxies have this odd bar shaped cluster of stars.
Sheth latter said "Now, with Spitzer we can measure the precise shape and distribution of matter within the bar structures, the bars are a natural product of cosmic evolution, and they are part of the galaxies' endoskeleton. Examining the endoskeleton for the fossilized clues to their past gives us a unique view of their evolution."
"An image of the Sculptor, a barred spiral galaxy"
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Image Credit:NASA |JPL-Caltec
"An Image of Galaxy NGC 1291 captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope"
Image Credit: Wikipedia | Commons
