The Hubble Space Telescope has created the most detailed and spectacular view
of a neighboring galaxy to our Milky Way - a spiral galaxy nearly 3 million light
years away that is buzzing with star formation. Welcome back to Launch Pad, I'm
Christian Ready, your friendly neighborhood astronomer. Well, it's
wintertime and I figured it was about time to move inside and see if I can't
have a go at making up some kind of a home studio. It's a work in progress, but
we'll see how it goes. Anyway, astronomers at the 233rd
meeting of the American Astronomical Society released a spectacular image of
the Triangulum galaxy, otherwise known as M33.
This image is composed of 54 separate images taken by the Hubble Space
Telescope that were stitched together meticulously over a two-year period.
The result is a staggering 665 million pixel image. In fact, I can't even show
you the full resolution because my computer would break if I attempted to
render that in the video [chuckles]. Triangulum is located 2.7 million light-years away in
about the same region of the sky as the Andromeda galaxy. Andromeda, Triangulum, and
the Milky Way are the three largest galaxies in our local group of galaxies
called the Local Group. Which coincidentally was the name of my
jazz-punk fusion band in high school. It was an experiment.
The local group consists of about 50 galaxies in total, the majority of which are small dwarf
galaxies that orbit either Andromeda or the Milky Way. The Triangulum galaxy is a
classic spiral-shaped galaxy. However, it's puffier, consisting of more gas and dust
and belongs in the special subclass of galaxies called a "flocculent spiral". It's
also much smaller than the two large galaxies of the local group, containing only
about 40 billion stars compared to the Milky Way's 100 to 400 billion stars, and
the Andromeda's 500 billion to as many as a trillion stars. Triangulum also
lacks a central bar that connects its spiral
arms to its central nucleus. It also seems to lack a central bulge, and this
is a feature that is well defined in both Andromeda and the Milky Way.
Andromeda and the Milky Way are also host to central supermassive black holes,
each of which weigh somewhere in the range of four million to tens of
millions of times the mass of our Sun. Triangulum on the other hand doesn't
seem to have any such supermassive black hole at its center. Triangulum does
have the classic stellar disc consisting of very well-defined spiral arms. The
difference in Triangulum though is that it's really poor in metals; that is to
say any element that is heavier than helium. So Triangulum represents a
somewhat more pristine star forming environment. That means its stars are not
as contaminated by pesky metals such as oxygen, carbon, silicon, lithium...you know,
the kinds of things that we need for life. Not only that, but Triangulum
doesn't seem to show any indication of mergers or collisions with other
galaxies. So in some ways, it's a throwback to a simpler time in our
universe when galaxies were undisturbed by their colliding neighbors. Now this
Hubble mosaic is very complementary to another mosaic made in 2015 of the
Andromeda galaxy. Hubble captured a 61 thousand light-year swath of Andromeda's
disc, starting from the central nucleus going all the way out to about halfway
to the edge of the galaxy, and allows astronomers to compare star formation in
Andromeda and in Triangulum. From our vantage point inside the Milky Way, we're
not able to get an overhead view of our home galaxy. Andromeda, likewise is tilted
by about 30 degrees. But Triangulum presents us with a nearly face-on view,
allowing astronomers to chart the evolution of stars across its entire
disk. Now we're going to dive deep into this image in a moment, but first I want
to take a minute to thank my first three patreon supporters - Patti Broussard, Neil
from Crypto Cruising, and Eric from Modern Day Family Man.
Thanks to your generous support, I'm able to do videos like this so thanks
guys, I owe you one! Now one of the most amazing things about
this image is that it shows off Triangulum's hurried rate of star
formation. Triangulum creates one new star every two years. That's about ten
times more intense than seen in the Andromeda galaxy. This suggests that
maybe Andromeda is in a relatively quiet and state whereas Triangulum is busy
just cranking out stars generation after generation. Now among the regions of
those newly formed stars is this one, IC142. This is an example of a very
large stellar association; a loose grouping of newly formed stars that are
not gravitationally bound to one another. So even though they were all formed at
roughly at the same time and in roughly the same region, they're moving apart
very gradually and will go on to take individual paths around the center of
Triangulum. And speaking of forming stars, NGC 595 is an example of a star forming
region inside the Triangulum galaxy. It's a region of ionized hydrogen and dust
which gives it its blue fluorescent color. But Triangulum is home to one of
the most active star-forming regions anywhere in the local group. This is NGC
604, a 1500 light-year diameter stellar nurser. It's one of the largest regions
of ionized hydrogen anywhere in the local group of galaxies. The hydrogen is
collapsing to form newer stars, but they're also fighting the outflow of
intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds created by recently formed
very hot new stars towards its center. This new Hubble image is giving
astronomers an unprecedented detailed look into the recent history of star
formation in Triangulum. Astronomers will be able to make maps of the cool and
dusty interstellar medium in between its stars,
and define the temperatures and luminosities for some 15 million
individual stars, not too mention identifying and cataloging some 1,000
individual star clusters within the galaxy. This new survey of Triangulum,
combined with similar surveys of Andromeda, the Milky Way, and the
Magellanic Clouds that orbit our galaxy, will allow astronomers to paint a much
more detailed picture of the formation and evolution of stars all across our
local Group of galaxies, and provide new insights into how stars form live and
die all throughout the universe. Now if you'd like to join me on this journey
through this amazing universe of ours, please make sure to subscribe and
ring that notification bell so that you don't miss out on any new videos until
next, time stay curious my friends.