More Hubble beauties...

[n2doc]

If they look funny to you, then good! The Virgo Cluster is massive, and has a lot of gravity. The galaxies bound to it are moving like bees surrounding a hive, each in its own orbit going every which way. These galaxies are screaming through the cluster at speeds of 10 million kilometers per hour, a truly terrifying velocity.

There is an ethereal gas distributed between the galaxies called the intercluster medium. It’s incredibly thin, but over the size of a galaxy — especially when said galaxy is barreling through it at such tremendous speed — the gas can exert significant pressure, called ram pressure. The pressure is actually blowing the galaxies’ internal gas clouds out into the cluster itself, making them look a little bit like pickup trucks driving down a highway with dirt copiously pouring out the beds*. This is especially obvious in NGC 4522 (the lower one), where you can see bright blue splotches, which are regions of intense star formation, along with dark lanes of dust actually above the galactic plane.

In NGC 4022, you can see how the ram pressure is roiling up the dust in the galaxy, and also blowing it back, though apparently not as briskly as in the other galaxy.

Links and info here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/09/30/two-hubble-stunners/

[gateley]

1. Breathtaking! Thanks!! nt

[NavyDavy]

2. oh my....I hope my daughter who is 9yo will be able to show those

pix and pixs like them to her children, but the way its going I think the earth is about eradicate the pest that are hurting her everyday.......

[Scout]

3. K & R n/t

[mopinko]

4. really cool. the intercluster medium

looks like a seam in a piece of marble. colors could be marble, also. funny.