(ORDO NEWS) — In 2016, scientists at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) published a snapshot of a vast cluster of galaxies in the southern constellation of the Furnace taken with the VLT telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
The cluster contains a whole collection of galaxies of various shapes and sizes, and some of these galaxies are quite mysterious.
Observations show that galaxies tend to form large groups called clusters. The factor that keeps galaxies in them is gravity, due to which one cluster can contain up to a thousand galaxies, and the sizes of clusters reach 30 million light-years.
The center of the Furnace Cluster is estimated by ESO to be about 65 million light-years away. The cluster contains about 60 large and 60 dwarf galaxies, some of which interact closely with each other.
The existence of such clusters illustrates the effect of gravity at large distances: it is able to collect colossal masses of individual galaxies in one region of space.
NGC 1399 is at the center of the Furnace Cluster, between three bright, hazy “bubbles” on the left side of the image. the center of the cluster.
At the lower right of the image, a large barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is visible, which is a prime example of this type of galaxy: a distinct bar extends through the central core of the galaxy, and spiral branches emerge from the ends of the bar.
In addition, NGC 1365 is a so-called Seyfert galaxy – it has a bright active nucleus, in the center of which is a supermassive black hole.
By the way, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) managed to take a picture of the star formation process:
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