Providing important clues on how the space between galaxies is polluted with chemical elements.
A team of international researchers studied galaxy NGC 4383, in the nearby Virgo cluster, revealing a gas outflow so large that it would take 20,000 years for light to travel from one side to the other.
The discovery was published a couple of weeks ago in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Lead author Dr Adam Watts, from The University of Western Australia node at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, said the outflow was the result of powerful stellar explosions in the central regions of the galaxy that could eject enormous amounts of hydrogen and heavier elements.
The mass of gas ejected is equivalent to more than 50 million Suns and gives us a rare insight into the physics of outflows and their properties.
Gas outflows are crucial to regulate how fast and for how long galaxies can keep forming stars. The gas ejected by these explosions pollutes the space between stars within a galaxy, and even between galaxies, and can float in the intergalactic medium forever.
The high-resolution map was produced with data from the MAUVE survey, co-led by ICRAR researchers Professors Barbara Catinella and Luca Cortese, who were also co-authors of the study.
The survey used the MUSE Integral Field Spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, located in northern Chile.
