Spitzer captured a strange galaxy

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope captured a meandering galaxy with an identical mind-shaped opening.

This galaxy is called NGC 1097, located 50 million light-years from Earth. It has a spiral-like form of our Milky Way, with stars lined into thin, long lines radiating from the center. The 'eye' at the center of this galaxy is in fact a giant black hole surrounded by stars. In the infrared image encoded in color from the Spitzer telescope, the area surrounding the invisible black hole is blue and the constellation is white.

This black hole is huge, up to 100 million times the size of the sun, and it continues to draw gas and dust from stars that accidentally enter the 'dead zone'. The central black hole in our Milky Way seems much more 'gentle' , with a size of only a few million times the sun.

'The formation and operation of these black holes are a fascinating topic for scientists,' said George Helou, deputy director of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology. , Pasadena said. 'Some theories suggest that this black hole may be diminishing in activity and will eventually enter a state of complete resting like a black hole in the current Milky Way.'

The 'eye' located at the center of the galaxy is actually a giant black hole surrounded by stars that form a ring. (Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech)

Stars around the black hole still have new stars because there is still a stream of matter flowing toward the center of the galaxy.

'This ring itself has been an interesting research topic, because it has a great star formation rate,' says Kartik Sheth, an astronomer at NASA's Spitzer Science Center. Sheth and Helou are members of the observation team this time.

In the Spitzer image, infrared light with short wavelengths is green, and long wavelength light is red. The galaxy's red spiral arms show dust being heated by newly formed stars . Old constellations are scattered throughout the blue galaxy.

The remaining dots of light may be stars close to this galaxy, which may also be images of galaxies lying far away.