Star births seen on cosmic scale in distant galaxy

[Darth Ruinus]

Star births seen on cosmic scale in distant galaxy

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists have found a cosmic supermom. It's a galaxy that gives births to more stars in a day than ours does in a year.

Astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-Ray telescope to spot this distant gigantic galaxy creating about 740 new stars a year. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy spawns just about one new star each year.

The galaxy is about 5.7 billion light years away in the center of a recently discovered cluster of galaxies that give off the brightest X-ray glow astronomers have seen. It is by far the biggest creation of stars that astronomers have seen for this kind of galaxy. Other types, such as colliding galaxies, can produce even more stars, astronomers said.

But this is the size, type and age of galaxy that shouldn't be producing stars at such a rapid pace, said the authors of a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"It's very extreme," said Harvard University astronomer Ryan Foley, co-author of the study. "It pushes the boundaries of what we understand."

The unnamed galaxy — officially known by a string of letters and numbers — is about 3 trillion times the size of our sun, said study lead author Michael McDonald of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

There's another strange thing about this galaxy. It's fairly mature, maybe 6 billion years old. Usually, this kind "don't do anything new... what we call red and dead," McDonald said in an interview. "It seems to have come back to life for some reason."

Because of that back-to-life situation, the team of 85 astronomers has nicknamed the galaxy cluster Phoenix, after the bird that rises from the ashes. The galaxy that is producing the stars at a rate of two per day is the biggest and most prominent of many galaxies there.

It's "helping us answer this basic question of how do galaxies form their stars," said Michigan State University astronomer Megan Donahue, who wasn't part of the study but praised it.

There's lots of very hot hydrogen gas between galaxies. When that gas cools to below zero, the gas can form stars, McDonald said. But only 10 percent of the gas in the universe becomes stars, Donahue said.

That's because the energy from black holes in the center of galaxies counteract the cooling. There's a constant "tussle between black holes and star formation," said Sir Martin Rees, a prominent astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge in England. He was not part of the study, but commented on it during a NASA teleconference Wednesday.

In this case, the black hole in the central galaxy seems to be unusually quiet compared to other supermassive black holes, Rees said. "So it's losing the tussle," he said.

But this massive burst of star birth is probably only temporary because there's only so much fuel and limits to how big a galaxy can get, Foley said.

"It could be just a very short-lived phase that every galaxy cluster has and we just got lucky here" to see it, Foley said.

___

Online:

Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

Chandra X-ray observatory: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chand ... index.html

Pretty awesome.

[Ziggy Stardust]

So how do they know stars are being born? This article is pretty vague, just mumbling something about X-rays, and I haven't been able to find a more detailed scientific article about it, just the standard pop-sci distillations. I mean, I trust them if that's what they say, I am just curious as to how they determine this.

Also ...

The unnamed galaxy — officially known by a string of letters and numbers — is about 3 trillion times the size of our sun

This seems like a really ... odd comparison to be making. Why not compare it to the size of our own galaxy? I mean, we already know a galaxy, by definition, will be larger than a single star, and this gives us no sense of scale as to how it relates to other galaxies. Just strikes me as a strange thing to throw in.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I think they mean 2 trillion times the mass of the sun rather than size, which is on the large side but not unheard of for a galaxy.

As for knowing stars are forming, there's a distinctive HII (Hydrogen 2) emission line associated with star formation.

[Baffalo]

I know black holes give off Hawking radiation and eventually lose mass... could it be that the black hole finally lost enough mass to stop drawing in so much gas that it was allowed to distribute back out among the outer reaches of the galaxy, triggering new star growth as a result?

[Eternal_Freedom]

I know black holes give off Hawking radiation and eventually lose mass... could it be that the black hole finally lost enough mass to stop drawing in so much gas that it was allowed to distribute back out among the outer reaches of the galaxy, triggering new star growth as a result?

That's unlikely I think. What's most probable is that this galaxy had a close encounter with another that shook up the disk enough to start new star formation.

[Solauren]

I know black holes give off Hawking radiation and eventually lose mass... could it be that the black hole finally lost enough mass to stop drawing in so much gas that it was allowed to distribute back out among the outer reaches of the galaxy, triggering new star growth as a result?

That's unlikely I think. What's most probable is that this galaxy had a close encounter with another that shook up the disk enough to start new star formation.

At least, the Black Hole theory is not likely at this stage in the life of the universe.

[Terralthra]

I know black holes give off Hawking radiation and eventually lose mass... could it be that the black hole finally lost enough mass to stop drawing in so much gas that it was allowed to distribute back out among the outer reaches of the galaxy, triggering new star growth as a result?

If I recall correctly, black holes of a certain mass and above gain more energy (and thus mass) from the cosmic background radiation than they lose in Hawking radiation.

[cosmicalstorm]

Eventually it kills them all. But thats on a much larger timescale. We still live in the early part of the Stelliferous Era. By the time galactic supermassive black holes start fading away it will be a long time indeed into the eternal night of the Black Hole Era.