most luminous galaxy tagged posts

Artist impression of W2246-0526, the most luminous known galaxy, and three companion galaxies. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello

ALMA data show the most luminous galaxy in the universe has been caught in the act of stripping away nearly half the mass from at least three of its smaller neighbors. The light from this galaxy, known as W2246-0526, took 12.4 billion years to reach us, so we are seeing it as it was when our universe was only about a tenth of its present age.

New observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveal distinct streamers of material being pulled from three smaller galaxies and flowing into the more massive galaxy, which was discovered in 2015 by NASA’s space-based Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)...

Artist impression of W2246-0526, a galaxy glowing in infrared light as intensely as 350 trillion suns. It is so violently turbulent that it may eventually jettison its entire supply of star-forming gas, according to new observations with ALMA. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; Dana Berry / SkyWorks; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Obscured quasar 12.4 billion light-years away – is so violently turbulent that it may eventually jettison its entire supply of star-forming gas, according to new observations with ALMA. A team used ALMA to trace, for the first time, the actual motion of the galaxy’s interstellar medium – the gas and dust between the stars. What they found, according to Tanio Díaz-Santos of the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, is a galaxy “so chaotic that it is ripping itself apart.”

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