NASA Weighed the Wind Billowing Out of the Cigar Galaxy, and It's Unbelievably Massive

[Judi Lynn]

By Brandon Specktor 8 hours ago



The wind created by new stars in the Cigar Galaxy (shown in red) is so strong it’s dragging the whole galaxy’s magnetic field deep into space.(Image: © NASA/SOFIA/E. Lopez-Rodriguez; NASA/Spitzer/J. Moustakas et al.)


Hanging over the scruff of Ursa Major's neck some 12 million light-years from Earth, a cluster of young stars known as the Cigar Galaxy is puffing epic amounts of wind into deep space.

This intergalactic stogie isn't just blowing hot air. The Cigar Galaxy is a starburst galaxy, meaning new stars are born in its action-packed center remarkably quickly — at least 10 times faster than in the Milky Way, according to NASA. In order to grow, all those bright young fireballs eject gargantuan amounts of gas and dust into space, taking the form of an incredibly powerful galactic wind that could help transmit the building blocks of galaxies to distant parts of the universe. [Spaced Out! 101 Astronomy Images That Will Blow Your Mind]

In a study published Jan. 4 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, NASA scientists weighed that wind to better understand how gas and dust — two ingredients for making newborn stars — enter into extragalactic space and influence the formation of new galaxies. Using an airborne infrared telescope, the astronomers counted pixels of dust in the faraway galaxy to estimate that roughly 50 million to 60 million suns' worth of mass were caught up in the Cigar Galaxy's mighty celestial wind.

That's a lot of gas and dust — and according to the new study, it was all aligned on the galaxy's magnetic field lines, which were also being dragged by the wind thousands of light-years into outer space. This marks the first observational evidence that massive galactic winds can actually pull a galaxy's magnetic field along with it, the researchers said.

More:
https://www.space.com/weighing-galactic-wind.html?utm_source=notification

[littlemissmartypants]

1. Very cool. Thanks for posting this, Judi Lynn . ♡

[dlk]

2. Interesting Article - Thanks for Sharing