Hubbles Showcase

Hubble's Showcase

Edwin P. Hubble, a US astronomer studied galaxies and devised a classification scheme for them. He also proposed what is known as Hubble's law - which in summary is that the spectra of distant galaxies are proportional to their distance. The Hubble Telescope which was launched in 1990 was named after him - This telescope's high resolution images are far better than can be obtained from the earth's surface. Through this telescope astronomers have been able to get high resolution images of the estimated billions (according to the Hubble space telescope site) of galaxies in our universe and have put some of the images of these galaxies into a showcase called the "Hubble's showcase." In this paper, we would be focusing on four of the galaxies that I found interesting - The Arp 220, NGC 5866, NGC 290 and M82.

ARP 220

The Arp 220 funnily named by the Hubble's Showcase as the "Super Star Clusters" is the "brightest of the three galactic mergers closest to the Earth". It contains enough material to equal over 10 million suns! That is twice as massive as any comparable sun in the Milky Way Galaxy (the Earth's galaxy). Even though these galaxy looks like a bunch of clusters of stars, Astronomers know they are not stars because they are much brighter than how stars look at that distance. The Hubble's Showcase captured this galaxy in visible light, although it shines brighter in infrared light. If Astronomers had an unobstructed view of the Arp 220 it would shine 50 times brighter than our Milky Way. This galaxy would continue to manufacture star clusters until it exhausts all its gas, which is predicted to happen in about 40 million years.

NGC 5866

The NGC 5866 also named as "The galaxy seen on Edge" in Hubble's showcase looks like a thin disc galaxy of type S0 (pronounced s-zero). It has a lot of complex dust lanes appearing in dark and red, while many of the stars appear in blue giving it that underlying bluish hue. Though it's very similar in Mass to our Milky Way, light takes about 60, 000 years to cross this particular galaxy, which is about 30 percent less time that light takes to cross our own galaxy. It also has a diameter of 60,000 light years, only two-thirds of the diameter of the Milky Way and lies in the Northern constellation Draco, about a distance of 44 million light years.

NGC 290

The NGC 290, fondly named as "The open star cluster in SMC" by the Hubble's showcase is a myriad of stars located about 200,000 light years away and roughly about 65 million years across. It consists of mainly hot white young stars along with red super giants. This galaxy is a good study to see how stars of different masses evolve, since all the open cluster stars were born about