NASA today said its Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new image what it calls a giant cosmic fossil.
The fossil is actually a galaxy, dubbed NGC 1132, which is the aftermath of an enormous multi-galactic pile-up, where the carnage of collision after collision has built up a brilliant but fuzzy giant elliptical galaxy far outshining typical galaxies.
NGC 1132, together with the small dwarf galaxies surrounding it, are dubbed a ‘fossil group" as they are most likely the remains of a group of galaxies that merged together in the recent past, NASA said.
In visible light the galaxy appears as a single, isolated, giant elliptical cluster, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Scientists have found that NGC 1132 resides in an enormous halo of dark matter, comparable to the amount of dark matter usually found in an entire group of tens or hundreds of galaxies, NASA said.
It also has a strong X-ray glow from an abundant amount of hot gas - an amount normally only found in galaxy groups. Its X-ray glow extends over a region of space ten times larger than the 120,000 light-year radius it has in visible light. An X-ray glow that is equal in size to that of an entire group of galaxies, NASA said.
NASA said the origin of this fossil group systems is a mystery. The most likely explanation is that they are the end-products of a cosmic feeding frenzy in which a large cannibal galaxy devours all of its neighbors.
A less likely explanation is that they may be very rare objects that formed in a region or period of time where the growth of moderate-sized galaxies was somehow suppressed, and only one large galaxy formed.
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