New Delhi, May 23 (IANS). Seeing stars and galaxies in the depths of space often causes confusion. American space agency NASA has posted a special picture on social media and has given the solution to this dilemma.
NASA’s Hubble Telescope shared the picture on its official Instagram account and wrote, “Stars or Galaxy?”. This photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows an entire group of galaxies, but some stars are also visible in it. NASA also gave information about an easy way to distinguish these two, i.e. ‘diffraction spikes’.
The posted image shows a galaxy cluster named MACS J1141.6-1905. Almost every bright point visible in it is an entire galaxy, containing millions or billions of stars. However, some bright points are stars relatively close to our galaxy. In such a situation, it is natural to be confused as to which point is a star and which is a galaxy.
According to NASA, when light from a star or other light source passes through the edges of the structures that support the Hubble telescope’s secondary mirror, it diffracts into sharp rays or ‘spikes’ all around. These diffraction spikes are the main clue to identify a star. Such clear and sharp rays are not visible in the Galaxy.
A star is clearly visible shining with diffraction spikes in the lower right part of the image. At the same time, spiral and elliptical galaxies of different sizes are spread on the left side.
MACS J1141.6-1905 is located in the ‘Crater’ galaxy cluster and is approximately 4 billion light years away from Earth. Hubble captured it in both visible and infrared light. Scientists have studied this cluster to understand gravitational lensing and galaxies that shine in X-rays.
The Hubble Space Telescope’s archive today has become a treasure trove of more than 1.7 million observations. This data is proving to be extremely useful for future astronomers. This photo, prepared in collaboration with NASA and the European Space Agency ESA, has been processed by H. Ebling of the University of Hawaii and G. Kober of NASA.
–IANS
MT/AS
