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S&T Newswire: The Cartwheel's Cometlike Clouds
S&T Newswire: The Cartwheel's Cometlike Clouds
The Cartwheel Galaxys unusual features have prompted astronomers using the Hubble
Space Telescope to probe deep into its heart. A close-up of the nucleus (inset) reveals
immense cometlike clouds of gas (blue knots) speeding through the galaxys innards.
(The clouds are not comets; they are many orders of magnitude larger and less dense.)
The inset was color coded to maximize contrast. Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2
images courtesy C. Struck, P. Appleton, and NASA.
The Cartwheels
Cometlike Clouds
(AMES, IA) A new look at images of
the Cartwheel Galaxy in Sculptor has
revealed comet-shaped knots of gas embedded in a band of dust circling the
galaxys nucleus. Astronomers using the
Hubble Space Telescopes Wide Field
and Planetary Camera 2 had already
noted the Cartwheels remarkable features outer and inner rings and connecting spokes and concluded that
they were seeing the aftermath of a
head-on collision with a smaller intruder galaxy (S&T: March 1995, page 10).
While the collision theory explained the
galaxys basic appearance, other details
remained a mystery.
A closer look at the HST images may
have brought astronomers a step nearer
to unlocking some of the Cartwheels
secrets. In the November 1996 Astronomical Journal, Curtis Struck (Iowa
State University) and his colleagues
write that the cometlike features suggest
massive dense clouds traveling supersonically through the surrounding gas.
These clouds, they contend, are plowing
through a ring of gas caused by the earlier collision between galaxies.
Why this is happening is less clear. A
possible explanation is that during the
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collision, clumps of gas were pulled inward, then released to oscillate around
their original positions. We may be seeing molecular condensations carving
wakes in a ring of gas moving outward.
Alternatively, the clouds may represent
a later stage in which ejected material
began falling back into the galaxys disk.
In this scenario, the comet heads were
first splashed out from the galaxys plane;
like balls tossed into the air, they then
slowed and fell back.
A Hit in Honduras?
(SAN LUIS, HONDURAS) Reports
continue to trickle in about a brilliant
fireball that lit up the sky over remote
sections of Central America on the
A bright fireball seen in
a remote corner of
Honduras (red star)
may have created an
impact crater tens of
meters across on the
evening of November
22, 1996.
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BELIZE
Caribbean
Sea
MEXICO
G UAT E M A L A
Guatemala
Villa Nueva
San
Salvador
Pacific
Ocean
Santa
Barbara H O N D U R A S
Santa Rosa
de Copn
Tegucigalpa
EL SALVADOR
N I C A R AG UA
100 km
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