NASA has released the sharpest image ever taken of the Cartwheel Galaxy, a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Sculptor.
The Cartwheel Galaxy was first spotted on wide-field images from the U.K. Schmidt telescope and then studied in detail using the Anglo-Australian Telescope.
Also known as LEDA 2248, ESO 350-40 and IRAS 00352-3359, the galaxy is an estimated 150,000 light-years in diameter and has a mass of about 3 billion solar masses.
Along with the two galaxies on the left, the Cartwheel is part of a group of galaxies approximately 500 million light-years away.
According to astronomers, the cartwheel shape of the galaxy is the result of a violent galactic collision.
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| This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the Cartwheel Galaxy. The image is based on earlier Hubble data of the Cartwheel that was reprocessed in 2010, bringing out more detail in the image than seen before. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble. |
Approximately 100 million years ago, a smaller galaxy plunged through the heart of the Cartwheel and produced shock waves that swept up interstellar gas and dust — much like the ripples produced when a stone is dropped into a lake — and sparked regions of intense star formation (appearing blue).
The outermost ring of the galaxy marks the shock wave’s leading edge.
The Cartwheel Galaxy presumably was a normal spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way Galaxy before the collision.
This spiral structure is beginning to re-emerge, as seen in the faint arms or spokes between the outer ring and bulls-eye shaped nucleus.
The ring contains at least several billion new stars that would not normally have been created in such a short time span and is so large our entire Milky Way would fit inside.