The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a stunning new image of UGC 2885, a barred spiral galaxy located some 232 million light-years away in the northern constellation Perseus. Otherwise known as LEDA 14030, UGC 2885 measures about 816,000 light-years across, or 8 times the size of our Milky Way Galaxy, and contains 10 times as many stars.
This Hubble image shows the barred spiral galaxy UGC 2885. Image credit: NASA / ESA / B. Holwerda, University of Louisville.
UGC 2885 has been nicknamed ‘Rubin’s Galaxy,’ after astronomer Dr. Vera Rubin, by University of Louisville’s Dr. Benne Holwerda, who observed the galaxy with Hubble.
“My research was in large part inspired by Vera Rubin’s work in 1980 on the size of this galaxy,” Dr. Holwerda said.
“Dr. Rubin measured the galaxy’s rotation, providing evidence for dark matter that makes up most of the galaxy’s mass.”
“We consider this a commemorative image. The goal of citing Dr. Rubin in our observation was very much part of our original Hubble proposal.”
Dr. Holwerda and his colleagues from Canada and the United States are seeking to understand what led to the enormous size of UGC 2885.
“It’s as big as you can make a disk galaxy without hitting anything else in space,” Dr. Holwerda said.
“One clue is that the galaxy is fairly isolated in space and doesn’t have any nearby galaxies to crash into and disrupt the shape of its disk.”
“Did the monster galaxy gobble up much smaller satellite galaxies over time? Or did it just slowly accrete gas to make new stars?”
“It seems like it’s been puttering along, slowly growing,” he said.
Using Hubble’s exceptional resolution, Dr. Holwerda and co-authors are counting the number of globular star clusters in UGC 2885’s halo.
“It is close enough for Hubble observations to resolve the globular cluster population,” the astronomers said.
“Several scaling relations between the globular cluster population and parent galaxy have been observed but these differ for disk and spheroidal — more massive — galaxies.”
“This galaxy is an ideal test case of these scaling relations as it lies between spiral and massive ellipticals.”
The astronomers will present their results January 8, 2020 at the 235th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawai’i.
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B.W. Holwerda et al. 2020. UGC 2885 ‘Rubin’s Galaxy’; Hubble Observations of a Gentle Giant Spiral Galaxy. 235th AAS Meeting, abstract # 430.01
This article is based on text provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
