The Hubble Space Telescope recently photographed a galaxy that resembles the painting of Dorian Gray - Portrait of a mysterious man who ages while its owner remains as young as the day the picture was taken, described in Oscar Wilde's book
The Hubble Space Telescope recently photographed a galaxy that resembles the painting of Dorian Gray - a portrait of a mysterious man described in Oscar Wilde's book who ages while he himself remains young. According to the entry on the book "The Picture of Dorian Gray" in Wikipedia, this was the wish of the young man, Dorian Gray when he heard a man envying him for his beauty. Indeed, it remains as beautiful as the day the picture was taken. However, somewhere in Dorian Gray's attic is the big secret: the portrait image is aging and waning in its place. His appearance and facial features did not change, but the changes are clearly visible in the picture, which reflects the vexation of his soul. After every sin and selfish act he commits, the picture gradually changes, and thus it gets distorted day by day. Towards the end of the novel, a dark, old, bitter and bad-hearted person is depicted in it. Eventually the spell wore off and the man aged and died within a short period of time.
Like the imaginary painting, the galaxy I Zwicky 18 looks more mature the more astronomers study it. When the galaxy once thought to be a baby in galactic terms is now understood to be mature.
The young appearance of the galaxy was detected 40 years ago by observations at the Palomar Observatory. These studies showed that an explosion of star formation occurred in this galaxy a few billion stars after its galactic neighbors. Galaxies that resemble the young appearance of Zviki 18 are usually found at the edge of the universe, meaning that we see them in their youth only due to their great distance and when the universe was young.
Astronomers were excited by the fact that a young galaxy could be studied from a short distance and learn about galactic evolution, which is normally only visible from a great distance.
However, new photographs of the Hubble eliminated this possibility. The telescope discovered old, blind stars within the galaxy, and this indicates that star formation began at least a billion years ago, and possibly even 10 billion years. Therefore, it is likely that the galaxy formed at about the same time as most other galaxies.
"Although the galaxy is not as young as we thought before, it is certainly in a challenging and unique developmental phase in the near universe," says astronomer Alessandra Aloisi from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, on behalf of the European Space Agency. who led the research.
Spectroscopic observations from ground-based telescopes have shown that Tzviki 18 is composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, the two main elements created in the Big Bang. Heavier elements form in the cores of stars and erupt into the universe when the stars die. The initial structure of the galaxy indicates that the rate of star formation was much lower than in galaxies of similar age. The galaxy has been studied by many of NASA's telescopes, including the Spitzer, Chandra and FUSE (Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer) space telescopes. However, the question of why so few stars were formed in this galaxy in the past and why so many new stars are being formed right now remains a mystery.
According to Hubble's data, the distance of Zviki 18 from us is 59 million light years, almost 10 million light years more than the previous estimates. While it is still in our backyard, on a galactic scale. The larger-than-expected distance may explain why astronomers have had difficulty locating old, faint stars within the galaxy until now. In fact, the hollow and old stars in Zveki 18 are within the limits of Hubble's ability to separate and be sensitive.
Aloisie and her team noticed the new distance when they observed variable stars that act as milestones within massive 18-star clusters known as cupid variable stars, pulsating at a regular rate. The timing of their pulses is solely related to their brightness.
By comparing their true brightness with the apparent brightness as predicted by a theoretical model built specifically for the low metal content of Zviki 18. The comparison allowed astronomers to determine the distance to the galaxies. The Cepheid distance was also confirmed by a separate distance marker, examining the apparent brightness of bright red stars older than a billion years.
Cepheid variables have been studied for decades and have become a tool for determining the scale of the universe. This is the first time that such stars with a low content of heavy elements have been discovered. This allows a unique glimpse into the properties of variable stars, a subject that is now at the heart of ongoing research.
Aloisie and her team published their research in the October 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
For information on the NASA website
And thanks to the commenters who set me on my mistake. From all my educational teachers. post Scriptum. Now I understand where the motif of looking at the pictures and interpreting the changes in them, which is common in the three "Back to the Future" films, comes from
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Fixed, and all I had to do was go to the Wikipedia entry…..
Thank you, friend, you educated me, art is outside my field, simply because I encompass too many fields. Wait until tonight, I will check all the details and correct the article accordingly.
That's right, the painting is of a man (and his name is Dorian Gray, eh?), and he doesn't really exist, only described in Wilde's book.
In the book, the painting ages instead of the young, handsome man who is drawn in it in a kind of magic act that even the artist who painted him does not understand, while the young man remains as he is. Years later the disappointed lover of that young man destroys the painting and the beautiful young man becomes angry, grows old and dies within moments. It seems to me that this is a kind of parable about youth and human nature, as seen through the very special eyes of Oscar Wilde. The connection to the near-distant galaxy is, as it turns out, rather loose...
The portrait is of a man and not of a woman!
If I understood correctly, I am not sure that the painting exists, it is described in a fictional book.
It would have been clearer if the drawing was attached.