Science and Space

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Recent galactic births surprise astronomers

Several dozen baby galaxies have turned up near the Milky Way and the findings may shed light on what triggers galaxies to form.

Most galaxies blinked into life more than 10 billion years ago, starting as small blobs of gas and stars that gradually merged into larger structures like the Milky Way. But after that initial baby boom, the galactic birth rate dropped significantly. So astronomers must look back through 10 billion light-years of mostly older galaxies to glimpse the small, faint infants from which those galaxies grew.

But now, a space telescope has found about three dozen of these galactic "building blocks" just 2 billion to 4 billion light years away. These relatively nearby finds appear eerily similar to the universe’s first galaxies. They have the same mass (equivalent to about 10 billion Suns), the same elemental composition (roughly that of the Sun), and the same age of stars (approximately 1 billion years old).

The discoveries were made with NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a space telescope that surveys ultraviolet wavelengths. GALEX detected the galaxies by the ultraviolet glow of their newborn stars, which are being formed at rates about a hundred times higher than in mature galaxies.

(Please search and read about GALEX in this blog)

posted by: kyawoo at 11:56 | link | comments (3) |
astronomy

Comments:

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Anonymous

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