Spirals and Supernovae

Spirals and Supernovae

This is a snapshot of the Hubble Space Telescope, showing the magnificent galaxy NGC 1015 living in China. It is distant from us at 118 million light years. The image is turned in the face, so you can see the majestic symmetrical sleeves and a bright central bulge.

NGC 1015 has a bright large center and sleek, tight-fitting sleeves, which is why it resembles the Milky Way. Bars are present in 2/3 of all spiral-type galaxies. The sleeves here come out of a pale yellow ring centered around the bar. Researchers believe that hungry supermassive holes hiding in the centers direct gas and energy from the outer arms into the core along these bright rods. This is a method of feeding a black hole, because of which a central bulge is formed. In 2009, a new-type Ia-type supernova was found in the galaxy. It was called SN 2009ig and can be seen in the upper left corner of the galactic center. These varieties of supernovae are important to study, since they are created by the explosion of white dwarfs, whose brightness peak is 5 billion times greater than that of the sun. With their help, you can measure distance in space.

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