FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

An Entire Galaxy Goes Missing—Sort Of

Buried within a white orb of dust and light lies NGC 4526, one of the most violent known galaxies.
Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt 

The tiny galaxy NGC 4526 is actually in there, almost entirely blotted out by its own light and leaving just a whirling disc of hot gas, dust, and glow.

NGC 4526, a member of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies that's currently twirling away 53 or so light-years from Earth, is small compared to its neighbors, but what it lacks in size is made up for in the galaxy's outright cosmic violence.

4526 is one of the most luminous lenticular galaxies so far discovered (lenticular being a sort of cross between a spiral and elliptical galaxy). Just since we've been watching it, the galaxy has featured two supernova explosions, one in 1969 and the other in 1994. Meanwhile, NGC 4526's heart is an unfathomably massive black hole, equal in mass to roughly 450 million of our Suns.

4526's spinning disc of stars, gas, and dust makes up about 7 percent of its total radius, an unusually large distance. The disc itself spins at a rate of 450 kilometers per second. A cosmic buzzsaw.

The image comes courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys, via NASA.