Cartwheel Galaxy Region
The Cartwheel's nucleus is shown in this Hubble Space Telescope color-coded image. The comet-like knots of gas are mostly confined to the core's left side. They are the blue knots arranged in a semi-circular pattern around the center of the nucleus. The 'heads' are a few hundred light-years across; the tails are more than 1, 000 light-years long, the longest of which is nearly 5, 000 light-years.
The structures look like comets because they probably were spawned by a collision between high-speed and slower-moving material. This collision created an arrowhead-shaped pattern called a bow shock, which is similar to the wake of a boat speeding across a lake.
Credit:
Curt Struck and Philip Appleton (Iowa State University), Kirk Borne(Hughes STX Corporation), and Ray Lucas ( Space Telescope Science Institute), and NASA/ESA
About the Image
| Id: | opo9636b2 |
| Type: | Observation |
| Release date: | 26 November 1996, 06:00 |
| Size: | 439 x 508 px |
About the Object
| Name: | Cartwheel Galaxy, IRAS 00352-3359 |
| Type: | • Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Lenticular • Galaxies Images/Videos |
| Distance: | 400 million light years |
Colours & filters
| Band | Wavelength | Telescope |
| Optical B |
450 nm | Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 |
| Infrared I |
814 nm | Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 |
