Astronomers working with the Hubble telescope have published a new image. It shows the spiral galaxy NGC 1637.
NGC 1637 is located 38 million light-years away from Earth toward the constellation Eridanus. It is an isolated galaxy. This means that NGC 1637 has no close neighbors with which it would gravitationally interact.
But despite its loneliness, NGC 1637 is of interest to astronomers. They used the Hubble telescope to capture it as part of a program dedicated to studying star formation in nearby galaxies.
Stars form in cold, dusty gas clouds that collapse under their own gravity. As the young luminaries grow, they heat their “nurseries” through powerful radiation and winds. All of these factors combine to control the rate of formation of future generations of stars.
Evidence of star formation is scattered throughout NGC 1637 if you know where to look. The galaxy’s spiral arms are dotted with pink clouds, many accompanied by bright blue stars. The pinkish color is due to the glow of hydrogen atoms that have been excited by ultraviolet radiation from young massive luminaries. This contrasts with the warm yellow glow of the galaxy’s center, where older and redder luminaries are densely packed together.
Stars that light up their birthplaces are relatively short-lived, and many of them collapse only a few million years after their birth. In 1999, the supernova SN 1999EM erupted in NGC 1637 and became the brightest star observed that year. When a massive star collapses, its explosion briefly eclipses the entire home galaxy. Although a supernova marks the end of a star’s life, it can also trigger the formation of new luminaries by compressing nearby clouds of gas and starting the stellar life cycle anew.
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