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Astronomers capture spectacular ‘thousand colour’ image of the Sculptor Galaxy
- Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have created a thousand colour image of the nearby Sculptor Galaxy.
- The spiral galaxy, discovered by Carloine Herschel in 1783, is located 11 million light-years away and is among the brightest in the sky.
- The new image, containing thousands of colors, aids in understanding the age, composition, and motion of stars, gas, and dust within the galaxy.
- Researchers used the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on the VLT, observing the galaxy for over 50 hours.
- Over 100 exposures were merged to cover an area of the galaxy approximately 65,000 light-years wide.
- Around 500 planetary nebulae were identified in the image, providing crucial distance markers to their host galaxies.
- Enrico Congiu, the study's lead author, emphasizes the complexity of galaxies and the detailed insight offered by the Sculptor Galaxy.
- Future research will focus on understanding gas flows, composition changes, and star formation processes within the galaxy.
- The revelations around small-scale processes impacting a galaxy's overall structure remain a mystery, according to Congiu.
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