A flare of light from the constellation of Centauri was seen by amateur astronomer in New Zealand. The blaze was caused by a massive explosion from another galaxy, which is 57 million light-years away.
"Dedicated amateur astronomer often make intriguing discoveries, particularly of fleeting astronomical phenomena such as supernovae and comets," NASA said on their Hubble feed. The last Hubble photo of the year was released at the time of writing.
NASA and the European Space Agency have released a new photo of the home of the explosion, which is called galaxy NGC 3568, and it shows stars and hazy gas in the sky.
Is it just us, or is it smirking at us from across space?
There is a group of galaxies, called the galaxy. M. Sun, NASA and Hubble are associated with the same entity.
There are two sweeping arms seen side-on as the rivers of stars swirl in a barred spiral shape. The arms of barred spiral galaxies do not curve all the way to the center, instead joining a central straight line of stars.
Another example of a barred galaxy is shown below.
The barred spiral galaxy. The Hubble Heritage Team is part of NASA.
Our own Milky Way is thought to be one of two-thirds of spiral galaxies that are barred.
The classification of the universe. M. De Leo is the author of "Antonio Ciccolella."
In 2008, a study of more than 2,000 spiral galaxies showed that the barred types were not seen as much 7 billion years ago. This suggests that they may be an older stage of a galaxy's life cycle, as mass of stars slightly deviate from their circular path around the center.
Bruce Elmegreen explained at the time that the stars' tiny elongations get locked into place and make a bar. As the bar locks more and more of these elliptical shapes into place, it becomes even stronger. A high percentage of the stars in the inner region join the bar.
Older still are elliptical galaxies that lack regions of active star formation and are full of elderly red stars.
We can hope that the new year will see even more amazing details of distant wonders after the launch of the James Webb telescope. Our most powerful telescope yet, with its ability to penetrate clouds of gas and dust to peer into stellar nurseries, might help reveal the full lifecycle of a galaxy.
You can read more about the image on NASA's website.
