In the early days of the Universe, 10.8 billion years ago, astronomers discovered the galaxy that bears battle scars after a space fight. Not in the form of drops or drive, like most galaxies, and a giant donut with a huge hole punched right through the center.
It klassificeret her as a rare type of galaxy known as a ring galaxy, and such is rare, even among this type — its form is not forged internal processes, and the clash, in which the core broke away when another galaxy passed through it.
Galaxy called R5519, and this is the first ring galaxy found within a few hundred light years away, making it the only known such object in the early Universe.
“This is a very interesting object, which we’ve never seen before,” said the astronomer, day by day hotel yuan from the Center of excellence for space astrophysics in three dimensions (3D ASTRO) ARC in Australia.
“It looks strange and familiar at the same time”.
The outer edge of the ring R5519 quite large, about 42 400 light years. The hole punched through the middle, has a diameter of about 17 612 light years, with no visible signs of stellar bulges, which normally fills the center of the galaxy.
Some ring galaxies, apparently, had a relatively peaceful education formed by such processes as orbital resonance or the accretion of material from another nearby galaxy.
In addition, R5519 shows a high rate of star formation in the ring — every year there about 80 solar masses of new stars. This suggests gravitational destruction — for example, due to the fact that another galaxy R5519 punches, sending waves propagating radially outward.
When these waves push and condense the gas and dust in the galaxy, it causes the star formation contributing to the gravitational collapse of clumps of dust that turn into stars.
In the local Universe ring galaxies of this type are extremely rare — 1000 times rarer than a ring galaxy formed less destructive processes. According to the researchers, the discovery R5519 suggests that the ring galaxies in the early Universe was as rare as in more recent times.
A study published in Nature Astronomy.
