16 12 19 M77Bfield NASA 1200

Författare/Upphovsman:

Credits: NASA/SOFIA; NASA/JPL-Caltech/Roma Tre Univ.

Kreditera:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-to-shape-a-spiral-galaxy (NASA)

Kort länk:

https://sewiki.info/b/486d2

Källa:

Wikimedia Commons

Upplösning:

1200 x 1201 Pixel (175132 Bytes)

Beskrivning:

Magnetic fields in NGC 1086, or M77, are shown as streamlines over a visible light and X-ray composite image of the galaxy from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Array, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The magnetic fields align along the entire length of the massive spiral arms — 24,000 light years across (0.8 kiloparsecs) — implying that the gravitational forces that created the galaxy’s shape are also compressing its magnetic field. This supports the leading theory of how the spiral arms are forced into their iconic shape known as “density wave theory.” SOFIA studied the galaxy using far-infrared light (89 microns) to reveal facets of its magnetic fields that previous observations using visible and radio telescopes could not detect.

Licens:

Public domain