Although the James Webb Space Telescope has been getting a lot of press lately, its predecessor Hubble Space Telescope This time it continues to impress from galaxy NGC 6956, a near-perfect example of an abstract galaxy located about 214 million light-years from Earth.
Barred galaxies, which get their name from a very prominent “bar”. stars which pierce the galactic core, are among the most numerous of the species galaxies in the known universe, They make up about 70% of all galaxies (Opens in a new tab). Ribbon structures are also more common in galaxies with AGNs, as gas and other material is fed toward the galactic nucleus along these bars.
this process It ultimately helps destabilize the tape (Opens in a new tab)However, as more mass is funneled into the galactic core, the more unstable the bar becomes, which eventually causes the bar to soften into the more traditional spiral configuration – Like NGC 2985 (Opens in a new tab) – what most people think of when they think of a file spiral galaxy.
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope pictures ever!
depending Image description by NASA (Opens in a new tab)This was the last image for NGC 6956 to look at Cepheid variable starsStars that vary in brightness from bright to dim at regular intervals. These periods of brightness and dimming are directly related to the true brightness of the star, and we can explain these differences in apparent brightness to the true brightness of the stars, allowing us to determine their distance from us.
This is an important way for astronomers to determine the distance to extragalactic objects like NGC 6956, as there are few other ways we currently know of to do this. There are other interesting features in NGC 6956 such as visible type Ia SupernovaIt is the product of the explosion of a white dwarf star as a result of accretion of material from a companion star.
This type of supernova is another important way to determine the distance to distant galaxies, as astronomers can measure how quickly a supernova is dimming to help measure its distance from Earth. And while the careful filling in of a galactic map is useful in itself, repeated measurements of the distance to these extragalactic objects are an important tool for understanding the current rate of The expansion of the universe.
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