Astronomers of the Spanish University of La Laguna undertook a study of the background galaxy NGC 1277, which stopped the formation of new stars. Researchers report that this system has not changed much over the last 10 billion years. The details of the observations, scientists announced in a press release posted by EurekAlert.
The original galaxy was opened 1875, a British astronomer by Lawrence Parsons. But since then, little was known. Explore the galaxy NGС 1277, located 220 million light-years from Earth, helped scientists space telescope “Hubble”. Astronomers found that the galaxy consists of old red stars, whose number is twice the number of stars in the milky Way. At the same time NGС 1277 is almost two times smaller than our galaxy. Typically, these relic galaxies removed billions of light years from the Solar system.
Researchers believe that at some time relic system just stopped to collect material from the intergalactic medium, required for its transformation in an ordinary spiral galaxy, and in the end remained in a transitional link in the lenticular galaxies.
Around NGС 1277 is a lot of globular clusters consisting of red stars. According to researchers, they influenced the initial shape of the galaxy. Usually in the later stages of evolution should appear blue globular clusters, which suggests that the system begins to absorb other galaxies or to collide with them. As a result of the influx of interstellar matter triggered new star formation. However, in NGС 1277 blue stars are almost completely absent.
A relic of the galaxy is near the Perseus cluster, consisting of more than thousands of galaxies. NGС 1277 moves at a speed of about three million kilometers per hour, which is too fast for that, so she doesn’t have time to draw substance from other star systems.
It is also known that near the center of the galaxy is one of the most massive black holes in the Universe. Scientists have found that in this area the interstellar gas is too hot to condense and form new stars.
Astronomers have studied the dead neighbor of the milky Way
Nikolai Khizhnyak