There’s a cosmic jellyfish in this week’s Hubble image

By Georgina Torbet March 26, 2023

This week’s Hubble image shows an unusual type of galaxy that might seen more at home in the ocean than among the stars: a jellyfish galaxy. These galaxies have a main body of stars, with tentacle-like structures reaching off away from the body in just one direction. This particular jellyfish galaxy, known as JW100, is located more than 800 million light-years away and is found in the constellation of Pegasus.

The jellyfish galaxy is located toward the bottom right of the image, with purple-pink tentacles of stars reaching downward. In the upper middle part of the image, you’ll also see two very bright blobs, which are the core of another galaxy within the same galaxy cluster. This nearby galaxy, called IC 5338, is the brightest one within the cluster and has a large glowing area around it called a halo.

The galaxy JW100 (lower right) features prominently in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The streams of star-forming gas dripping from the disk of the galaxy like streaks of fresh paint are formed by a process called ram pressure stripping. Their resemblance to dangling tentacles led astronomers to refer to JW100 as a ‘jellyfish’ galaxy. JW100 is over 800 million light-years away, in the constellation Pegasus. — The galaxy JW100 (lower right) features prominently in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The streams of star-forming gas dripping from the disk of the galaxy like streaks of fresh paint are formed by a process called ram pressure stripping. Their resemblance to dangling tentacles led astronomers to refer to JW100 as a ‘jellyfish’ galaxy. JW100 is over 800 million light-years away, in the constellation Pegasus. ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team

As for the jellyfish galaxy, its strange shape is formed through a process called ram pressure stripping. “Ram pressure stripping occurs when galaxies encounter the diffuse gas that pervades galaxy clusters,” Hubble scientists explain. “As galaxies plow through this tenuous gas, it acts like a headwind, stripping gas and dust from the galaxy and creating the trailing streamers that prominently adorn JW100. The bright elliptical patches in the image are other galaxies in the cluster that hosts JW100.”

Recommended Videos

Scientists are interested in studying jellyfish galaxies to learn more about how stars are formed in their long tendrils. The ram pressure stripping effect feeds dust and gas into the tendrils, which then become hot spots of star formation called starbursts. By studying how stars form in these busy environments, astronomers can learn more about both star formation and about the host clusters in which the jellyfish galaxies reside.

Topics

Tech News

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…

Space

Celebrate Hubble’s 34th birthday with this gorgeous nebula image

In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s legendary Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers took a snapshot of the Little Dumbbell Nebula, also known as Messier 76, or M76, located 3,400 light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation Perseus. The name 'Little Dumbbell' comes from its shape that is a two-lobed structure of colorful, mottled, glowing gases resembling a balloon that’s been pinched around a middle waist. Like an inflating balloon, the lobes are expanding into space from a dying star seen as a white dot in the center. Blistering ultraviolet radiation from the super-hot star is causing the gases to glow. The red color is from nitrogen, and blue is from oxygen.

Tomorrow, April 24, marks the 34th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. For more than three decades, this venerable old telescope has been peering out into space, observing stars, galaxies, and nebulae to understand more about the universe we live in. To celebrate this birthday, Hubble scientists have shared a new image showing the striking Little Dumbbell Nebula, also known as Messier 76, which is located 3,400 light-years away.

In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s legendary Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers took a snapshot of the Little Dumbbell Nebula, also known as Messier 76, or M76, located 3,400 light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation Perseus. NASA, ESA, STScI

Space

Hubble discovers over 1,000 new asteroids thanks to photobombing

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158 looks like someone took a white marking pen to it. In reality it is a combination of time exposures of a foreground asteroid moving through Hubble’s field of view, photobombing the observation of the galaxy. Several exposures of the galaxy were taken, which is evidenced by the dashed pattern.

The Hubble Space Telescope is most famous for taking images of far-off galaxies, but it is also useful for studying objects right here in our own solar system. Recently, researchers have gotten creative and found a way to use Hubble data to detect previously unknown asteroids that are mostly located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The researchers discovered an incredible 1,031 new asteroids, many of them small and difficult to detect with several hundred of them less than a kilometer in size. To identify the asteroids, the researchers combed through a total of 37,000 Hubble images taken over a 19-year time period, identifying the tell-tale trail of asteroids zipping past Hubble's camera.

Space

Hubble spots a bright galaxy peering out from behind a dark nebula

The subject of this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the spiral galaxy IC 4633, located 100 million light-years away from us in the constellation Apus. IC 4633 is a galaxy rich in star-forming activity and also hosts an active galactic nucleus at its core. From our point of view, the galaxy is tilted mostly towards us, giving astronomers a fairly good view of its billions of stars.

A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a galaxy partly hidden by a huge cloud of dust known as a dark nebula. The galaxy IC 4633 still shines brightly and beautifully in the main part of the image, but to the bottom right, you can see dark smudges of dust that are blocking the light from this part of the galaxy.

Taken using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument, the image also incorporates data from the DECam instrument on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, which is located in Chile. By bringing together data from the space-based Hubble and the ground-based DECam, astronomers can get a better look at this galaxy, located 100 million light-years away, and the dark dust partially obscuring it.