Astronomers have created the most detailed image of a galaxy of its kind ever seen.
The “incredibly detailed” picture shows parts of the Sculptor Galaxy that have never been seen before.
Scientists were able to European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to create the most detailed image that shows thousands of colours ever made.
It was created by observing the galaxy for 50 hours, and stitching together 100 exposures. The width of the image shows 65,000 light years across space, almost the full galaxy.
The Sculptor Galaxy is officially known as NGC 254. It is a starburst galaxy, where stars are being constantly formed.
The detail of the new image allows scientists to see the building blocks themselves – the stars, gas and dust – in fine detail. Each of them emits their own shade of light, so having it in such fine detail and colours means that scientists can deeply understand the small parts of what is happening in the galaxy.
“We can zoom in to study individual regions where stars form at nearly the scale of individual stars, but we can also zoom out to study the galaxy as a whole,” said co-author Kathryn Kreckel from Heidelberg University.
Researchers can use those different shades to understand the age, composition and motion of the parts of the galaxy.
"The Sculptor galaxy is in a sweet spot," the observatory's Enrico Congiu, who led the research, said in a statement. "It is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible detail, but at the same time, big enough that we can still see it as a whole system."
The research is described in a new paper, ‘The MUSE view of the Sculptor galaxy: survey overview and the planetary nebulae luminosity function’, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
