Tag Archives: star formation

Hubble Spies a Loopy Galaxy

The tell-tale signs of a galactic merger

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this striking view of spiral galaxy NGC 7714.  NGC 7714 is a spiral galaxy at 100 million light-years from Earth — a relatively close neighbor in cosmic terms. This galaxy has drifted too close to another nearby galaxy and the dramatic interaction has twisted its spiral arms out of shape, dragged streams of material out into space, and triggered bright bursts of star formation.

NGC 7714 has witnessed some violent and dramatic events in its recent past. Tell-tale signs of this brutality can be seen in the galaxy’s strangely shaped arms, and in the smoky golden haze that stretches out from the galactic center.

So what caused this disfigurement? The culprit is a smaller companion named NGC 7715, which lies just out of the frame of this image — but is visible in the wider-field DSS image, as seen below.

Wide-field image of NGC 7714 -- In this image, the bright star you can see on the left is around a billion times closer than the galaxy.
Wide-field image of NGC 7714 — In this image, the bright star you can see on the left is around a billion times closer than the galaxy.

The two galaxies drifted too close together between 100 and 200 million years ago, and began to drag at and disrupt each others structure and shape. The interacting pair formed by NGC 7714 and NGC 7715 is named Arp 284.

As a result, a ring and two long tails of stars have emerged from NGC 7714, creating a bridge between the two galaxies. This bridge acts as a pipeline, funneling material from NGC 7715 towards its larger companion and feeding bursts of star formation. Most of the star-forming activity is concentrated at the bright galactic center, although the whole galaxy is sparking new stars.

Astronomers characterize NGC 7714 as a typical Wolf-Rayet starburst galaxy. This is due to the stars within it; a large number of the new stars are of the Wolf-Rayet type — extremely hot and bright stars that begin their lives with dozens of times the mass of the Sun, but lose most of it very quickly via powerful winds.

This new picture not only reveals the intricate structure of NGC 7714, but also shows many other objects that are much further away. These background galaxies resemble faint smudges of light, some of them with spiral forms. This Hubble image is a composite of data capturing a broad range of wavelengths, revealing the correlation of the gas clouds and stars in the galaxy.

Credit: Georgia Bladon, Hubble/ESA, Garching

Starburst Galaxies emit more radiation than a million suns emit at all wavelengths

Ultra-luminous X-Ray Sources in Starburst Galaxies

The Antennae Galaxies are an example of a starburst galaxy occurring from the collision of NGC 4038/NGC 4039. (Credit: NASA/ESA)
The Antennae Galaxies are an example of a starburst galaxy occurring from the collision of NGC 4038/NGC 4039. (Credit: NASA/ESA)

Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are point sources in the sky that are so bright in X-rays that each emits more radiation than a million suns emit at all wavelengths. ULXs are rare. Most galaxies (including our own Milky Way) have none, and those galaxies that do host a ULX usually contain only one. ULXs are also mysterious objects. They can’t be normal stars because their huge luminosities should then tear them apart.

Most astronomers think that ULXs are black holes more than about ten solar masses in size (so-called intermediate mass black holes) that are accreting matter onto a surrounding disk and emitting X-rays. Bright X-ray emission is not unusual – the nuclei of galaxies also are bright X-ray emitters – but they are super-massive black holes, while ULXs are neither super-massive nor located in galactic nuclei.

An artist's rendition of one of the newly discovered SPIRE 'hot starburst' galaxies (credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss)
An artist’s rendition of one of the newly discovered SPIRE ‘hot starburst’ galaxies (credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss)

CFA astronomers Stefano Mineo and Andy Goulding and their colleagues used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to search for ULXs in a sample of seventeen luminous infrared galaxies that are exceptionally bright because of their extreme star formation activity. If star formation does signal the presence of ULXs, or even produce them, then these objects should have many. The team discovered fifty-three ULXs (with an uncertainty of about 30% ) among the 139 X-ray sources present in this sample.

An Ultraluminous X-ray Source (ULX) in the center of galaxy M82 that astronomers had thought was a black hole is really the brightest pulsar ever recorded. (Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Toulouse/M. Bachetti; Optical: NOAO)
An Ultraluminous X-ray Source (ULX) in the center of galaxy M82 that astronomers had thought was a black hole is really the brightest pulsar ever recorded. (Credit:
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Toulouse/M. Bachetti; Optical: NOAO)

They report, however, that this ULX figure is actually ten times smaller than would be expected if ULXs correlated with simple star formation activity. They offer several possible explanations for this deficiency, including a surfeit of elements heavier than helium in these galaxies (these elements can suppress the birth of black holes).

The galaxy NGC 1068, seen here in X-ray (red), optical (green) and radio (blue), is actively forming stars and contains three ultra-luminous X-ray sources ULXs. Astronomers investigating the connections between young stars and ULXs have completed a study of active star-forming galaxies and were surprised to find they are deficient in ULXs. (Credit: NASA/CXC/MIT/C.Canizares, D.Evans, Optical NASA/STScI, Radio NSF/NRAO/VLA)

But the most likely scenario, they argue, is that large amounts of gas in these galaxies are present and absorbing X-rays, with the result that many of the ULXs present are not detected. Their conclusion implies that deep X-ray surveys of galaxies must take absorbing gas into account when estimating their internal X-ray properties and how this radiation affects the galaxies’ properties and evolution.

 

Reference(s):

“A Deficit of Ultraluminous X-ray Sources in Luminous Infrared Galaxies,” W. Luangtip, T. P. Roberts, S. Mineo, B. D. Lehmer, D. M. Alexander, F. E. Jackson, A. D. Goulding and J. L. Fischer, MNRAS 446, 470, 2015

Credit: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory