Although the James Webb Space Telescope has received a lot of press attention lately, its predecessor Hubble Space Telescope It continues to impress this time from the galaxy NGC 6956, an almost perfect example of an abstract galaxy located about 214 million light years from Earth .
Barred galaxies, which derive their name from a very prominent “bar”. stars that cut through the galactic core, are among the most numerous types of galaxies in the known universe, They make up about 70% of all galaxies (Opens in a new tab). Ribbon structures are also more common in galaxies with active galactic nuclei, as gas and other material is fed towards the galactic nucleus along these bars.
This process Ultimately helps to destabilize the tape (Opens in a new tab)However, the more mass that is funneled into the galactic core, the more unstable the bar becomes, which eventually causes the bar to soften into the more traditional spiral configuration – Like NGC 2985 (Opens in a new tab) – what most people think of when they think of a spiral galaxy file.
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according Image description by NASA (Opens in a new tab)This last image of NGC 6956 was to take a look at Cepheid variable stars, which are stars whose luminosity fluctuates from bright to dim at regular intervals. These periods of brightness and dimming are directly related to the real brightness of the star, we can explain these differences in the apparent brightness of the real brightness of the stars, which allows us to determine their distance from us.
This is an important way for astronomers to determine the distance to extragalactic objects like NGC 6956, as there are few other ways we currently know to do this. There are other interesting features in NGC 6956, such as the visible Type Ia Super Nova that is the product of the explosion of a white dwarf star as a result of the accumulation of material from a companion star.
This type of supernova is another important way to determine the distance to distant galaxies, as astronomers are able to measure how quickly a supernova is dimming to help measure its distance from Earth. And while accurately filling in a galactic map is useful in its own right, repeated measurements of the distance to these extragalactic objects are an important tool for understanding the universe’s current rate of expansion.
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