Astronomers see Sculptor Galaxy in thousands of hues at once

Located 11 million light-years from Earth, the Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) was observed by astronomers for more than 50 hours with a spectrograph installed on the VLT telescope, operated by the OES in Chile.

The detailed image that astronomers obtained "reveals features" of the galaxy that "had never been observed before", such as about 500 planetary nebulae, regions of gas and dust released by Sun-like stars that are dying, the OES said in a statement.

According to the OES, planetary nebulae "can be used as distance markers for their host galaxies."

Galaxies are made up of stars, gas and dust that emit radiation in different wavelengths or colors.

The more shades of color there are in an image of a galaxy, the more we can learn about its inner workings, says the statement from the OES, an astronomical organization of which Portugal is a member.

The work released today, and published in the specialist journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, will allow in the future, according to its authors, "exploring the way in which gas flows, changes its composition and forms stars throughout the Sculptor Galaxy".

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