NASA claims to have captured "space fossils"

(NLDO) - What NASA calls "cosmic fossils" is evidence of terrifying behavior from the Milky Way's satellite galaxy.

NASA has just released a close-up photo of the globular cluster NGC 2005, which the agency calls a "cosmic fossil."

The image was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's most prolific space explorer and partner ESA (European Space Agency).

"Fossil of the universe" NGC 2005 - Photo: NASA

NGC 2005 itself is not an unusual globular cluster, but it becomes special when compared to its surroundings.

NGC 2005 is located in a galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), about 750 light-years from its center.

The LMC is the largest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, the galaxy that contains our Earth.

Globular clusters are dense groups of stars that can contain tens of thousands or millions of stars, tightly bound by gravity and therefore very stable.

This stability contributes to their longevity: globular clusters can be billions of years old and often contain very old stars. So studying globular clusters in space can be like studying fossils on Earth.

Earth's fossils provide insight into the characteristics of ancient plants and animals, globular clusters shed light on the characteristics of ancient stars.

Current theories of galactic evolution predict that galaxies will merge with each other as they grow.

Among them, the Milky Way - a giant monster in the galactic world - once swallowed more than 20 other galaxies to reach its giant size today.

The LMC is much smaller than the Milky Way, but the globular cluster Hubble just captured is evidence that it was once a monster, too.

What makes NGC 2005 special compared to its surroundings is that its stars have a different chemical composition than the surrounding stars. This suggests that NGC 2005 did not originally belong to the LMC, but to an ancient galaxy that was swallowed by the LMC.

"The other galaxy merged long ago and has dispersed, but NGC 2005 remains as an ancient witness to the merger," NASA wrote.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/nasa-tuyen-bo-chup-duoc-hoa-thach-cua-vu-tru-196240618110915292.htm