Monday, June 5, 2017

Hubble 'Traps' a Vermin Galaxy #Science

How can the Rockhouse possibly resist discovering what constitutes a Vermin Galaxy.



This shows a distant galaxy -- visible as the smudge to the lower right -- as it begins to align with and pass behind a star sitting nearer to us within the Milky Way. This is an event known as a transit. The star is called HD 107146, and it sits at the center of the frame. Its light has been blocked in this image to make its immediate surroundings and the faint galaxy visible -- the position of the star is marked with a green circle.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Science Daily:  Hubble 'traps' a vermin galaxy

The Rockhouse some cataclysmically cool art but we don't see any vermin.

Senator Harrumph:  Senator, I knew Vermin and you're not Vermin; you're simply common trash

Thanks for the advisory but I know already I'm trash and I can only aspire someday to be real Vermin.


A detailed study of this system is possible because of the much more distant galaxy -- nicknamed the "Vermin Galaxy" by some to reflect their annoyance at its presence -- as the star passes in front of it. The unusual pairing was first observed in 2004 by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, and again in 2011 by Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. The latter image is shown here, as the Vermin Galaxy began its transit behind HD 107146. The galaxy will not be fully obscured until around 2020, but interesting science can be done even while the galaxy is only partly obscured. Light from the galaxy will pass through the star's debris disks before reaching our telescopes, allowing us to study the properties of the light and how it changes, and thus infer the characteristics of the disk itself.

- SD

There's your answer, mates, and the interested student is invited to pursue the original article to learn more about Vermin but you know already where you can find a quicker study than that.

Maestro, rim shot, please

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