Discover Top Posts Tagged with #virgo supercluster

The Milky Way Might be Part of an Even Larger Structure than Laniakea

#laniakea #virgo supercluster #virgo cluster #local cluster #milky way #solar system #the universe

Messier 100 - Grand Design Spiral Galaxy

One of the brightest galaxies in the Virgo supercluster, the face-on spiral galaxy is classified as a starburst galaxy, or at least, the inner parts are.

This is not the normal behavior of spirals, who often have their strongest starbirth at the edges along their arms, and while that is indeed happening with M100, the ram pressure stripping of the Virgo cluster is dampening the star birth around the edges.

Despite being popularly known as a grand design galaxy, and in this image it certainly appears to be that way, astronomers have detected a small bar structure at the centre, where huge amounts of star formation appears to be going on, most likely the supermassive black hole pushing outwards and causing clumping that then creates stars.

Still the yellowish colour shows most of the stars there are older G, K, M type stars.

In 2019 a supernova was spotted towards the centre, but this image also gives a close up on the central region.

#grand design #spiral galaxy #virgo supercluster #supermassive blackhole #messier #galaxies

Messier 91 - Barred Spiral Galaxy

63 million light years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices and part of the Virgo supercluster.

As with many spirals in the cluster, much of the galaxy has and continues to be stripped of star forming gas, leaving it heading towards lenticular and ultimately elliptical galaxy morphology.

The large over extended central bulge with a yellow looking colour, with minimum dust and gas features is caused by a lack of star birth, however, this is opposed by the outer arms that have a blue/pink colour, where star birth is occurring (the blue being new hot O and B type stars, and the pink by UV light bombarding the dust and gas and causing it to glow).

The central supermassive black hole is estimated to be somewhere between 10-40 million solar masses.

#astronomy #stars #virgo supercluster #messier #space #star formation

Messier 90 - Spiral Galaxy

This is what happens to spiral galaxies when they stray into the Virgo cluster, the gravitational pull towards the centre causes the galaxy to experience ram pressure stripping, that has resulted in the outer edges of the spiral becoming featureless.

At the centre however there's significant star formation, where dust and gas is significantly dense.

Ultimately this galaxy will lose the ability to create stars, if it's not merged with another before it gets to that point.

#astronomy #stars #galaxies #spiral galaxies #virgo supercluster #messier

Messier 86 - Elliptical Galaxy

It looks like a giant hole in space, but looking at elliptical galaxies with low resolution tends to merge all the stars up to a point, while not seeing the ones that lie behind, the truth is, the star density reduces as you move out in more or less a uniform pattern.

The 2nd image was taken by Hubble, and gives a better idea of how the stars are arranged.

What isn't easy to see is a stream of stars that extend from NGC 4438, a disrupted Spiral galaxy to the left of the above image, which appears to have been stripped of some material from M86, and closer in to M86 are a few stream of stars that look to have once been dwarf galaxies orbiting but now stripped by the larger galaxy.

Much of the dust and gas of M86 has been stripped out due to ram pressure, as the galaxy is moving quickly through interstellar space towards the centre of the Virgo cluster, causing the dust and gas to be pushed out as it moves.

#astronomy #stars #galaxies #elliptical galaxy #virgo supercluster #messier #space