NASA and European Space Agency have posted a picture An irregular dwarf galaxy captured by the Hubble Area Telescope that they admit is “not thrilling” at first look. Nevertheless, there’s extra occurring than initially meets the attention. The businesses mentioned they’re presently conducting in depth analysis into the “complicated construction” of NGC 5238, which is positioned 14.5 million light-years away within the constellation Canes Venatici. The truth is, astronomers assume the distribution of stars in NGC 5238 might have been distorted after it swallowed one other galaxy.
They consider that due to NGC 5238’s variety of stars (which Hubble is nice at serving to picture), it could have had a “shut encounter” with one other galaxy a billion years in the past. However as a result of there aren’t any galaxies shut sufficient to distort the star distribution on this manner, it’s extra seemingly that NGC 5238 merged with a smaller galaxy. Along with having many stars, the galaxy can be house to globular star clusters, which NASA describes as “glowing vibrant spots in and across the galaxy, round which many extra stars are clustered.”
Astronomers plan to dig deeper into the info to find out about NGC 5238’s previous. In the event that they discover a inhabitants of stars with totally different properties than most different stars within the galaxy, that may be a transparent indication {that a} merger has occurred. They can even attempt to decide whether or not a sudden “burst of star formation” occurred after galaxies got here collectively.
NASA factors out that the merger of dwarf irregular galaxies with smaller satellite tv for pc galaxies is strictly what might have stimulated galaxy clustering within the early universe. Due to this fact, the company mentioned, the info captured by Hubble from NGC 5238 might assist researchers check elementary concepts in regards to the evolution of the universe.
