M64: 魔眼星系

2021年03月29日

M64: The Evil Eye Galaxy
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA & the PHANGS-HST Team; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

Explanation: Who knows what evil lurks in the eyes of galaxies? The Hubble knows — or in the case of spiral galaxy M64 — is helping to find out. Messier 64, also known as the Evil Eye or Sleeping Beauty Galaxy, may seem to have evil in its eye because all of its stars rotate in the same direction as the interstellar gas in the galaxy’s central region, but in the opposite direction in the outer regions. Captured here in great detail by the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, enormous dust clouds obscure the near-side of M64’s central region, which are laced with the telltale reddish glow of hydrogen associated with star formation. M64 lies about 17 million light years away, meaning that the light we see from it today left when the last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees roamed the Earth. The dusty eye and bizarre rotation are likely the result of a billion-year-old merger of two different galaxies.

Tomorrow’s picture: sprite mountain

M64: 魔眼星系
影像提供: ESA/Hubble & NASA & the PHANGS-HST Team; 致谢: Judy Schmidt

说明: 有谁知道星系的眼状核心内，藏有什么魔头？哈勃望远镜镜知道，或者说在螺旋星系M64的案例里，提供了找出答案的助力。有魔眼星系或睡美人星系称号的梅西耶64 (M64)，其核心之所以看似魔眼，是因为星系核心的恒星和星际气体，全都同方向旋绕，而较外围区的，则是反方向旋绕。在这幅由轨道上的哈勃望太空远镜镜拍摄的高解析影像里，庞大的尘埃云遮住了M64中心区的近侧，其内更交错有恒星诞生产生的特征泛红氢辉光。M64位在北天的后发座内，离我们约1千7百万光年远，所以如今我们所见的星光，起程时人类和黑猩猩的最后共同祖先仍在地球上漫游。尘埃所构成的”黑眼圈”和怪异的旋转方式，可能是10亿年前两个星系合并所致。（Messier 64/M64: 魔眼星系/黑眼星系）

明日的图片: sprite mountain