LONDON: In a rare find, astronomers have discovered a gargantuan galaxy cluster, 9.8 billion light years away , in which the brightest galaxy is rapidly creating about 800 stars every year.
The discovery , made with the help of Nasa’s Hubble Space telescope, is the first to show that gigantic galaxies at the centre of massive clusters, which are usually made of stellar fossils-old, red or dead starscan grow significantly by feeding off gas stolen from other galaxies. However, the new galaxy , at the heart of a cluster na med SpARCS1049+56, seems to be bucking the trend by forming new stars at an incredible rate. “The galaxy is furiously making new stars after merging with a smaller galaxy, which is lending its gas,” said lead author Tracy Webb of McGill University in Canada.
Beads on a string are telltale signs of something known as a wet merger. Wet mergers occur when gas-rich galaxies collide this gas is converted quickly into new stars.The new discovery is one of the first known cases of a wet merger at the core of a galaxy cluster.
