A spiral galaxy 200 million light years from Earth is being ripped apart as it passes through a galaxy cluster
The Hubble Space Telescope captured images of the dying galaxy, which has bright blue streaks flowing away as its contents are torn out into space, iO9 reported.
The blue streaks are fiery new stars that the galaxy cluster is ripping away into space.
Spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 is moving through Abell 3627, the galaxy cluster that will be its undoing.
Ram pressure stripping is the culprit behind the spiral galaxy's slow demise. The process is "a drag force felt by an object as it moves through a fluid," iO9 explained. "In this case, the fluid is a superheated gas, which tends to settle at the centers of galactic clusters."
The galaxy eventually won't have enough of the cold gas needed to form new stars, leaving it to wither away to nothing.
Ram pressure stripping is an influence on the future evolution of galaxies, Discovery News reported.
The dying galaxy is being pulled apart in "the heart of the Great Attractor, a region of space where the combined masses of the galaxies contained within create such an overwhelming gravitational force that all surrounding galaxies and galactic clusters are being pulled toward it," Discovery News said, adding that the Milky Way and its galactic cluster are going toward it as well.
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