Whooooo is there? Just “Cosmic Owl” – the latest strange discovery from James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
A new study using JWST data has helped scientists find objects in the owl faces that peek at us from billions of light years. This structure, formed by the very rare collisions of two rare ring galaxies, also serves as a natural lab where you can study many of the processes involved in galaxy evolution.
The galaxy comes in several shapes, from our home galaxy, a Milky Way spiral to a cigar-shaped M82. One of the slightly distinctive types is the ring galaxy such as the Hoag object. These galaxies form when small galaxies cruise their larger companions straight up, kicking stars and gases through shock waves into the ring around the central core.
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Ring galaxies are extremely rare and account for only 0.01% of all galaxies discovered so far. However, they are pairs of ring galaxies detected during the collision. “Space Owl” to be precise, as described in Prelint, posted on Arxiv. Although this paper has not yet been peer reviewed, the object has already been identified by another team that independently detected the same collision. This is a paper posted on Arxiv on June 19th, called “Infinity Galaxy.”
Mingyu Li, a doctoral student in the Department of Astronomy at Tinga University in China and the first author of the new study, said he and his co-authors accidentally discovered a bird-like astronomical sight.
“We were analyzing all the radio sources using public JWST data from a very well-studied region called The Cosmos Field, the largest mosaic of the sky that spans two square degrees. Li added that the colliding galaxy pairs quickly stand out due to the high-resolution imaging capabilities of the JWST.
Related: 42 James Webb Space Telescope Images
These snapshots revealed that the galaxies are very similar. Apart from being a ring galaxy, both are relatively small. Each diameter is about 26,000 light years, or about a quarter of the diameter of the Milky Way. Furthermore, the core of each galaxy (which is tightly packed with old stars around the super-large black holes) forms the eyes of an owl. Fine-scale JWST data show that both black holes, more than 10 million times the mass of the sun, are ragingly pulling the surrounding matter, making the galaxy’s core a “active galactic nucleus.”
In contrast, JWST images show that “beak” (the collision front between the two galaxies) is “an area of incredibly intense activity.” Using data from the large millimeter/sub-millimeter array (ALMA) of Atacama in Chile, researchers discovered that the beak contains a huge chunk of molecular gas. Lee describes it as “a raw fuel for star formation,” and is pushed against it by collision-related shock waves in the galaxy. Alma’s data has brought the owl redshift to 1.14, or about 11 billion light years from us.
Additionally, radio frequency observations from a very large array based in New Mexico suggest that a jet of charged particles ejecting from a single galaxy black hole is pounding the molecular gas cloud and compressing it further. According to Li, the shock waves and radio jets together “caused a massive burst of star formation, turning their beak into a ‘stellar nursery’. ”
Simulations of galaxy collisions show that they last for hundreds of millions of years. In this case, researchers estimate that the collision occurred 38 million years ago, so the owl’s face is likely to be visible for a long time.
But the owls aren’t visually impressive, Lee said — because it’s “also an exceptional natural laboratory.” [researchers] To ensure that several important galactic evolution processes occur simultaneously in one system. ”
In fact, owls already provide valuable insight into how galaxies form and grow. Lee said that the burst of star formation caused by galactic collisions and radio jets in the beak area “can become a previously underestimated mechanism for a rapid and efficient conversion of gas into stars.” This could help researchers understand how galaxies constructed star masses very quickly in the early history of the universe, he added.
Researchers will study the owl further to understand the physical process that created it. Li said that simulations of galaxy gases would help researchers “help understand the exact conditions, such as the collision angle and the galaxy’s original structure.
The owl joins some strange form of astronomical phenomena discovered by JWST previously. These include question mark-shaped structures formed from galaxies and twigs of gas from newborn stars that resemble cat tails.
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