ESO Images Lopsided Meathook Galaxy

A team of astronomers from the European Southern Observatory has just released a new image of an incredibly beautiful, lopsided cosmic structure called the Meathook Galaxy. Also known among experts as NGC 2442, the formation was the host of a recent supernova explosion.

The galaxy is very interesting to astronomers because each of its two spiral arms has its own peculiarities. The shortest of them is tightly folded in on itself. Experts add that a massive star within recently reached the end of its burning cycle within.

The other spiral arm is considerably larger, and the advanced instruments that the ESO team used to make the observations reveal the existence of significant areas of stellar formation within. In addition, this arm extends farther outwards from the galactic core than its counterpart.

During the recent observations session, astronomers at ESO managed to capture two contrasting views of this asymmetric spiral galaxy, by using the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, and the NASA Hubble Space Telescope.

This enabled them to capture views of NGC 2442 from different perspective. The target of their study is located some 50 million light-years away, in the southern constellation of Volans (The Flying Fish).

Experts believe that the lopsided appearance that this galaxy now sports is the result of a series of gravitational interactions with another galaxy, that it may have underwent millions of years ago.

Despite this idea has been proposed a few years ago, astronomers have thus far been unable to identify a potential candidate for such interactions around NGC 2442. The new ESO view was taken using the MPG Wide Field Imager (WFI) imager.

“Although the Wide Field Imager, on the ground, cannot approach the sharpness of images from Hubble in space, it can cover a much bigger section of sky in a single exposure. The two tools often provide complementary information to astronomers,” an ESO press release reads.

“ESO’s observations also highlight the other end of the life cycle of stars from Hubble. Dotted across much of the galaxy, and particularly in the longer of the two spiral arms, are patches of pink and red,” the experts go on to say.

“This color comes from hydrogen gas in star-forming regions: as the powerful radiation of new-born stars excites the gas in the clouds they formed from, it glows a bright shade of red,” they conclude.