A gorgeous new set of images show the striking sight of nearby galax , captured by a telescope called the VLT Survey Telescope ( VST ) , place at the European Southern Observatory ( ESO ) ’s Paranal Observatory in Chile . Some of these galaxies are well - known , like the famous Sextans A , which is a small dwarf galaxy with an unusual square shape that is located just 4 million light years away .
Sextans A , prove above , is just a fraction of the size of our whitish Way galaxy at only 5,000 light years across and has been mold by epic supernova events as stars come to the close of their spirit and explode , advertise the cloth of the galaxy into its rum conformation .
It was studied along with other galaxies like the nearby NGC 3109 , shown above , to study how extragalactic nebula shape , as part of a project call The VLT Survey Telescope Survey of Mass Assembly and Structural Hierarchy ( VST - SMASH ) . In total , the project covered 27 galaxies .
“ We endeavor to read how galaxies are formed as a function of their tidy sum and morphology . This means asking ourselves how stars are formed in situ , within galaxies , but also how they are accreted ( ex situ ) during merger process with other extragalactic nebula , ” explain lead researcher Crescenzo Tortora of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics . “ to do so , we need to trace the colour of these galaxies up to their outskirts to investigate the presence of lightheaded structures belonging to these galaxies and of shadowy galaxies orb around them . This is useful to uncover leftover from galactic interaction , constrain the hierarchic outgrowth of cosmic social system formation . ”
Other galaxies studied in the labor include the coiling galaxy IC 5332 , locate 30 million lite days away , the temporary galaxy NGC 5253 , located 11 million light years away , and NGC 5236 , also bang as the Southern Pinwheel , located 15 million faint long time away . The Southern Pinwheel is a specially striking bar spiral galaxy that is one of the tightlipped and burnished in the sky — so close that you do n’t even demand a scope to see it , as it can be watch over using binoculars .
“ This is the first time that all these extragalactic nebula are observed in such a deep and elaborate fashion and with homogeneous data , ” Tortora say . “ In coming years , onlyEuclidwill reach comparable depth in the optical domain , but without the same encompassing spectral range of a function at the VST ocular wavelengths . TheVera Rubin Observatory , instead , while keep an eye on in similar spectral regions to ours , will accomplish similar depths only after many eld of observations . This do the VST an tool that can still make a dispute , making us desire for interesting results as part of our survey . ”
Further information is release in the ESO magazineThe Messenger .
