Hubble Space Telescope Spies A Tenuous Diffuse Galaxy
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Hubble Space Telescope captured GAMA 526784, an ultra-diffuse galaxy that appears as a tenuous patch of light in this image. This wispy object resides in the constellation Hydra, roughly four billion light-years from Earth. Ultra-diffuse galaxies such as GAMA 526784 have a number of peculiarities. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. van der Burg, Acknowledgment: L. Shatz
[...] Ultra-diffuse galaxies such as GAMA 526784 have a number of peculiarities. For example, their dark matter abundance can be either extremely low or extremely high - ultra-diffuse galaxies have been observed with an almost complete lack of dark matter, whereas others are comprised of almost nothing but dark matter. Another peculiarity of this class of galaxies is their unusual abundance of bright globular clusters, something not observed in other types of galaxies.
Hubble captured GAMA 526784 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which was installed in 2002 by astronauts during Hubble Servicing Mission 3B. Since then, the instrument has played a pivotal role in some of Hubble's most impressive scientific results, including capturing the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The ACS has also photographed Pluto in advance of the New Horizon mission, observed gargantuan gravitational lenses, and found fully formed galaxies in the early Universe.
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