Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have created a true masterpiece: a super-detailed image of the galaxy NGC 253. It reveals its previously unseen features and demonstrates the life of stars.
NGC 253, also known as the Sculptor Galaxy, is located 11 million light-years from Earth. It is characterized by active processes of new star formation and a high content of interstellar dust. According to researchers, NGC 253 is in many ways an “ideal” galaxy for study. It is close enough to us that we could examine its internal structure and study its components in incredible detail. But at the same time, it is large enough that we can see it as a single system.
For this reason, NGC 253 was selected for a project aimed at obtaining the most detailed portrait of the galaxy. The MUSE instrument, installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, was used in this study. It observed NGC 253 for over 50 hours, taking over a hundred exposures and covering an area about 65,000 light-years wide. After recording enormous amounts of data at each individual point, astronomers then created a detailed image of it. It is so detailed that it allows us to study regions of active star formation on a scale almost equivalent to that of individual stars.
Another important advantage of the image is its colors. The fact is that all the main components of galaxies (stars, gas, and dust) emit light of different colors. Therefore, the more shades of color there are in an image, the more scientists can learn about its internal structure. While conventional photos of galaxies contain only a few colors, the new map of NGC 253 includes a thousand. This provides astronomers with all the necessary information about the stars, gas, and dust within the galaxy, such as their age, composition, and motion.
The first analysis of the NGC 253 portrait has already produced interesting results. Scientists have discovered around 500 planetary nebulae in the galaxy — regions of gas and dust created by dying stars that were once similar to the Sun. For comparison, excluding our closest neighbors, astronomers typically find fewer than a hundred planetary nebulae per galaxy. Thanks to their properties, planetary nebulae can be used to determine the distance to the galaxies in which they are located. This is key information on which all other research depends.
Future projects using the NGC 253 map will be able to investigate how its gas flows, changes its composition, and forms stars. This data is extremely important for understanding how seemingly local processes can have such a significant impact on a galaxy that is thousands of times larger.
According to ESO
