NASA spots mysterious ‘jellyfish’ galaxy swimming in space

NASA has spotted another mysterious, yet stunning, object out there in space, which it is calling ‘jellyfish’ galaxy.

The telescope of NASA captured a unique looking ‘jellyfish’ galaxy, which, as the name entails, resembles a jellyfish swimming in space. The galaxy ESO 137-001, when looked in visible light, features blue ribbons of young stars dangling from the galaxy’s disk just like cosmic tentacles. However, when looked in X-ray light, there is a giant tail of hot gas streaming behind the galaxy, as per NASA.

The newly forming stars in the galaxy’s tail are mysterious since processes common in large groups of galaxies should make it better for new stars to emerge. “Both gas and dust are getting stripped off, but how much and what happens to the stripped material and the galaxy itself are still open questions,” said co-investigator Stacey Alberts.

The jellyfish galaxy is a spiral galaxy just like the size of the Milky Way, but slightly less massive. Its tail extends across 260,000 light-years of space, almost three times the galaxy’s width. What’s more unique is that galactic tails like this are difficult to spot since they are so tenuous, however, in jellyfish galaxy’s tail, there as stars forming.

“We think it’s hard to strip off a molecular cloud that’s already forming stars because it should be tightly bound to the galaxy by gravity. Which means either we’re wrong, or this gas got stripped off and heated up, but then had to cool again so that it could condense and form stars,” explained Alberts.

For more details regarding the galaxy, NASA plans to use its James Webb Space Telescope, which will be launched in 2021, in order to study ESO 137-001 for learning how the gas is being removed from the galaxy and why stars are forming within the gaseous tail.