Elliptical galaxies were once thought to be aging star cities whose star-making heyday was billions of years ago.The old fucking the young. The old revived by the young. It's a very old and universal story. It's the lion and the jewel.But new observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are helping to show that elliptical galaxies still have some youthful vigor left, thanks to encounters with smaller galaxies.
Images of the core of NGC 4150, taken in near-ultraviolet light with the sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), reveal streamers of dust and gas and clumps of young, blue stars that are significantly less than a billion years old. Evidence shows that the star birth was sparked by a merger with a dwarf galaxy.
As for this galactic image...
It was not taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and nor is it something in deep space. It's a candle in the Unicorn.
