New massive galaxy discovered
Bright flares are visible near the event horizon of a super-massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Astronomers now claim to have found a new, older galaxy, nearly 13 billion light-years away.
A newly identified galaxy may be the largest ever on record.
Beyond being the largest galaxy ever found by humans, it is also the brightest. According to Space.com, "The colossal galaxy cluster is also the brightest in X-ray light, and the galaxy at its heart apparently gives birth to more than 700 stars per year — hundreds of times as fast as our Milky Way forms stars."
The galaxy cluster is about 7 billion light-years away from earth and is formally known by the alphabet-soup name of SPT-CLJ2344-4243, but scientists have given it the nickname "the Phoenix Cluster."
According to MIT News, Michael McDonald, a Hubble Fellow in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, said that the Phoenix cluster is also very much alive.
“Central galaxies have typically been referred to as ‘red and dead’ — just a bunch of old stars orbiting a massive black hole, and there’s nothing new happening. But the central galaxy in this cluster has somehow come to life, and is giving birth to prodigious numbers of new stars," McDonald said.
Mcdonald believes the galaxy may be able to produce so many stars due to rapid cooling. According to Space.com, the galaxy's luminous look is due to all the X-rays it sheds. This suggests that the Phoenix Cluster is also the fastest-cooling cluster yet known.
According to the Epoch Times, McDonald is looking to continue his research of the Phoenix cluster using the Hubble Space Telescope. “You’d see these fantastic blue filaments where stars are forming out of cooling streams. It should look quite remarkable, instead of our ground-based images which show a blob of blue light.”
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