NGC 134

Nov 10, 2007 10:59 GMT  ·  By

VLT, or the Very Large Telescope, represents the most advanced optical instrument used to observe the universe. It is composed of four separate telescopes named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun, which can function separately or together to form an interferometer, allowing scientists to see the same details corresponding to a much larger telescope. The 8.2m diameter Unit Telescopes, used individually, can picture astronomical objects, as faint as magnitude 30, one billion fainter than the human eye can see, in a time of one hour of exposure.

Being a program of the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere or ESO, the VLT has been recently visited by the European Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potocnik, and has participated in the observing of a series of images of a distant spiral galaxy. The visit took place on 27th of October, and the Commissioner used the Antu, 8.2-m Unit Telescope of the VLT.

The beautiful spiral galaxy, mostly unobserved until now, is named NGC 134 and nicknamed the 'Island of the Universe" - a barred spiral galaxy with its spiral arms loosely wrapped around in center core, a bright bar-shaped region.

Discovered by Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope, NGC 134 is located at about 60 million light-year away from Earth, meaning that the pictures that the VLT is taclking now actually show the way the galaxy looked like when the dinosaurs disappeared from Earth. In cosmological terms, NGC is very far away, it is the dominant member of Virgo or the Local Supercluster, and one of the 200 brightest galaxies in the sky.

The first feature the astronomers observed was that the galactic disk was warped out of its shape, like a bent record disk that spent too much time out in the Sun. Most of the people think that a galaxy is shaped as a flat gas and stars structure, but the reality is that more than half of the spiral shaped galaxies in the observable universe present some kind of warping as a result of the action of the neighboring galaxy's gravitational influence, or the aftermath of a past collision with another galaxy.

Such interactions often produce Tails of material, stars and gas, being pulled out from the galaxy. Our Milky Way shows the presence of a small warp as well. The scientists' question now is, what caused the warp in the shape of NGC 134, gravitational influence or a past collision with another galaxy?

The VLT images also show that the galaxy, has large amounts of ionized hydrogen gas, seen in red in the picture, glowing hot, in which stars are forming. Studying galaxies similar to NGC 134 provides a good opportunity to learn more about the Milky Way.