Get an eyeful of the stunning galaxies near us in ultraviolet light

[Judi Lynn]

New pictures from LEGUS survey will help boffins understand how stars form
By Katyanna Quach 18 May 2018 at 00:38

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Galaxy NGC 6744, about 30 million light-years away, from the LEGUS survey.
Image credit : NASA, ESA, and the LEGUS team

Astronomers have published the largest ultra-violet survey of the local universe, showcasing 50 active galaxies in high resolution using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

The project nicknamed LEGUS (Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey) captures a whopping 39 million hot blue stars and about 8,000 star clusters within a 60 million light year radius around Earth. The stars range from one to several billions years old, and are bunched together in groups ten times more massive than the largest ones seen in our Milky Way galaxy.

The team chose these galaxies from more than 500 candidates based on their sizes, mass, star formation rate, and metallicity - the abundance of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

"There has never before been a star cluster and a stellar catalog that included observations in ultraviolet light," said Daniela Calzetti, an astronomy professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst leading the survey, said.

More:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/18/uv_galaxy_map/