(ORDO NEWS) — Hoag’s Object is an atypical ring galaxy more than 600 million light-years from Earth . With a diameter of 120,000 light years, the galaxy contains only about eight billion stars.
For comparison, the diameter of the Milky Way is 100,000 light years, but at least 100 billion luminaries of different sizes, masses and ages live in it!
The blue-white ring surrounding the yellow core is a “factory” for the formation of very bright and massive stars, each of which will live for several tens of millions of years, and then explode in a supernova, which will lead to the birth of new stars. The bright core is a “repository” of old stars, mostly red giants.
The space that appears to be a “void” separating the core from the ring actually contains several star clusters, but they are too faint to be seen from this distance.
Unfortunately, astronomers cannot yet explain the mechanism of formation of such galaxies in the Universe.
The image attached to this article was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on July 29, 2001.
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