Most Detailed Map of a Galaxy Has Thousands of Colors VIDEO

The image obtained after 50 hours of observation by the VLT telescope of the European Southern Observatory is a cosmic masterpiece : it is the most detailed map ever drawn of a galaxy, in this case the Sculptor Galaxy , and includes thousands of colors simultaneously , whereas conventional images contain only a handful. The presence of so many colors does not only have an aesthetic value: each shade corresponds to different components , such as stars , gas and dust , and this means that the map captures an enormous quantity of data in every single position. The result, which is being published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, is due to the group of researchers led by the Italian Enrico Congiu of the ESO, in which the National Institute for Astrophysics of Arcetri (Florence) and the University of Padua also participated for Italy.

" Galaxies are incredibly complex systems that we are still struggling to understand," says Congiu. "The Sculptor Galaxy is in an ideal position : it is close enough to resolve its internal structure and study its fundamental components in incredible detail ," continues the researcher, "and at the same time it is large enough to still see it as a complete system ." The Sculptor Galaxy, also known by the acronym NGC 253 , is 11 million light-years away and is about 65,000 light-years long : to cover such a vast area, the researchers had to stitch together over 100 different images obtained by the Very Large Telescope. After an initial analysis, 500 planetary nebulae and regions of gas and dust expelled by dying stars similar to the Sun have already emerged: a very high number, considering that usually there are about a hundred of them. "How such small processes can have such a large impact on a galaxy whose total size is thousands of times larger," concludes Congiu, "is still a mystery."