Photo of the day: the home of the newborn stars
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has presented an image of the “heart” of the galaxy designated NGC 5236, located approximately 15 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra.
The named object is a barred spiral galaxy. It is also known under the name South Pinwheel, which it received for the beautiful shape of its spiral branches.
The picture shows thousands of newborn luminaries. These stellar nurseries were formed due to the presence of a supermassive black hole in the center of NGC 5236. It pulls on itself huge masses of matter, but, on the other hand, powerful centrifugal flows of matter and energy emanate from its surroundings. This provokes intense star formation processes.
” There are many bright star-forming regions in the galaxy, including the visible region near the galactic center,” notes ESO.
The above image was taken with the MUSE receiver (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer; shown in the first photo) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
