A gorgeous new set of images shows the striking sight of nearby galaxies, captured by a telescope called the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), located at the European Southern Observatory (ESO)’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Some of these galaxies are well-known, like the famous Sextans A, which is a small dwarf galaxy with an unusual square shape that is located just 4 million light years away.
Sextans A, shown above, is just a fraction of the size of our Milky Way galaxy at only 5,000 light years across and has been shaped by epic supernova events as stars come to the end of their lives and explode, pushing the material of the galaxy into its odd configuration.
It was studied along with other galaxies like the nearby NGC 3109, shown above, to learn how galaxies form, as part of a project called The VLT Survey Telescope Survey of Mass Assembly and Structural Hierarchy (VST-SMASH). In total, the project covered 27 galaxies.
“We strive to understand how galaxies are formed as a function of their mass and morphology. This means asking ourselves how stars are formed in situ, within galaxies, but also how they are accreted (ex situ) during merger processes with other galaxies,” explained lead researcher Crescenzo Tortora of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics. “In order to do so, we need to trace the colors of these galaxies up to their outskirts to investigate the presence of faint structures belonging to these galaxies and of faint galaxies orbiting around them. This is useful to uncover leftovers from galactic interactions, constraining the hierarchical process of cosmic structure formation.”
Other galaxies studied in the project include the spiral galaxy IC 5332, located 30 million light years away, the irregular galaxy NGC 5253, located 11 million light years away, and NGC 5236, also known as the Southern Pinwheel, located 15 million light years away. The Southern Pinwheel is a particularly striking barred spiral galaxy that is one of the closest and brightest in the sky — so close that you don’t even need a telescope to see it, as it can be observed using binoculars.
“This is the first time that all these galaxies are observed in such a deep and detailed fashion and with homogeneous data,” Tortora said. “In coming years, only Euclid will reach comparable depth in the optical domain, but without the same wide spectral range at the VST optical wavelengths. The Vera Rubin Observatory, instead, while observing in similar spectral regions to ours, will reach similar depths only after many years of observations. This makes the VST an instrument that can still make a difference, making us hope for interesting results as part of our survey.”
Further information is published in the ESO magazine The Messenger .
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.