Behold a galactic onion: the shell galaxy NGC 3923, noticed by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory’s Darkish Power Digicam (DECam) at a distance of about 70 million light-years from Earth.
Shell galaxies make up roughly 10% of all elliptical galaxies, one of many three important galaxy sorts. The opposite two sorts are spiral galaxies, like our Milky Manner, and irregular galaxies. Shell galaxies have layered rings, or concentric layers, inside their galactic haloes. NGC 3923’s construction possible emerged from a galactic merger, through which the bigger galaxy peeled stars away from the smaller galaxy’s disk. These stars then bought blended into the bigger galaxy’s halo, forming the shells.
NGC 3923 has over twenty shells, according to NASA, although just a few are seen within the DECam picture. Analysis published in Astronomy & Astrophysics in 2016 discovered that the galaxy might have as many as 42 shells.
NOIRLab, which operates the digital camera, noted in the release that NGC 3923 is about 50% bigger than the Milky Manner, and its shells are the biggest of all recognized shell galaxies.
The shells aren’t the one function of the 250-megapixel picture. In direction of the highest of the picture is a big gravitational lens across the galaxy cluster PLCK G287.0+32.9. Gravitational lenses are large objects or collections of objects in house with gravitational fields so robust that they bend gentle passing by them from extra distant sources, permitting the sunshine from these distant objects to be magnified.
Astronomers use gravitational lenses to identify a number of the universe’s most historical gentle; final yr, a workforce of astronomers spotted the oldest-known star—about 12.9 billion years outdated—within the arc of a gravitational lens. Sturdy gravitational lenses can bend gentle in arcs, but additionally in mesmerizing Einstein Rings, which accurately look like floating rings of sunshine in house. Earlier this yr, signatures in Einstein rings boosted the case for axions, a minuscule theorized particle, as a candidate for darkish matter, the unknown stuff that makes up about 27% of our universe.
The total-sized picture is just too massive to host on this measurement, however you may test it out—and zoom in on its myriad pinpricks of sunshine—here. You’ll be able to see NGC 3923’s shells in higher element, but additionally be struck by the massiveness of the cosmos.
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