Date: 12 Oct 2006 14:59:08
From: INBOX ASTRONOMY: NEWS ALERT
Subject: HUBBLE CAPTURES GALAXY IN THE MAKING (STScI-PRC06-45)
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FOR RELEASE: ober 12, 2006
PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC06-45
HUBBLE CAPTURES GALAXY IN THE MAKING
Images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have provided a dramatic glimpse of a large and massive galaxy
under assembly by the merging of smaller, lighter galaxies. Astrophysicists believe that this is the way galaxies
grew in the young universe. Now, Hubble observations of the radio galaxy MRC 1138-262, nicknamed the
"Spiderweb Galaxy" show dozens of star-forming satellite galaxies as individual clumpy features in the process
of merging. A radio galaxy emits more of its energy in the form of long-wavelength radiation (radio wavelengths)
than at visible light wavelengths. Because the galaxy is 10.6 billion light-years away, astronomers are seeing it
as it looked in the universe’s early formative years, only 3 billion years after the Big Bang.
Credit: NASA, ESA and G. Miley (Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands)
To see and read more about the Spiderweb Galaxy on the Web, visit:
http://hubblesite.org/news/2006/45
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news//html/heic0614.html
For more information, contact:
George K. Miley
Leiden Observatory, Leiden, The Netherlands
(Phone: 011-0031-71-527 5849/5833; E-mail: miley@strw.leidenuniv.nl)
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
(Phone: 410-338-4514; E-mail: villard@stsci.edu)
Lars Lindberg Christensen
Hubble/ESA, Garching, Germany
(Phone: 011-49-89-3200-6306; Cell: 011-49-173-3872-621; E-mail: lars@eso.org)
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space
Agency (ESA). The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. The
Institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., Washington.
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