constellation of #Ursa Major (The Great Bear) tagged posts

Hubble sees a swarm of ancient star clusters around lenticular galaxy NGC 5308, located just under 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows star clusters encircling a galaxy, like bees buzzing around a hive: lenticular galaxy NGC 5308, just under 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). Members of a galaxy type that lies between an elliptical and a spiral galaxy, lenticular galaxies such as NGC 5308 are disk galaxies that have used up, or lost, the majority of their gas and dust. As a result, they experience very little ongoing star formation and consist mainly of old and aging stars.

On Oct...

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

It is known today that merging galaxies play a large role in the evolution of galaxies and the formation of elliptical galaxies in particular. However there are only a few merging systems close enough to be observed in depth. The pair of interacting galaxies seen here—known as NGC 3921 — is one of these systems.

NGC 3921—found in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear)—is an interacting pair of disk galaxies in the late stages of its merger. Observations show that both of the galaxies involved were about the same mass and collided about 700 million years ago. You can see clearly in this image the disturbed morphology, tails and loops characteristic of a post-merger.
The clash of galaxies caused a rush of star formati...