📷 Image Credits: India Today
Indian astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery, locating a gamma-ray emitting collisional ring galaxy just 30 million light-years from the Milky Way. This enigmatic structure, named ‘Kathryn’s Wheel’, was identified by a team of astronomers from the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune. The galaxy forms when a smaller ‘bullet’ galaxy pierces through a larger galaxy near its center, producing a shock wave that results in a ring of star-forming regions and a gas-poor galaxy.
The research, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters by Prof. Vaidehi S. Paliya and Prof. Dhruba J. Saikia, shed light on the intense star-forming activities surrounding the central spiral galaxy, potentially triggered by the collision of the galaxies. The gamma-ray emission from ‘Kathryn’s Wheel’ was confirmed by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, marking a historic first in the detection of a collisional ring galaxy system in the gamma-ray band.
Despite its close proximity to the Milky Way, ‘Kathryn’s Wheel’ has been under-studied due to the presence of a nearby bright star and its location in a crowded, low-latitude area near the Galactic plane. However, this discovery opens up new avenues for exploring the origin and transport of cosmic rays and their connection with star-forming activities, given its unique position near our galaxy.
The identification of ‘Kathryn’s Wheel’ highlights the significance of high-resolution, multiwavelength observations in uncovering hidden astrophysical treasures in the universe. The galaxy’s structure and the mechanisms behind its gamma-ray emission provide valuable insights into the dynamics of galaxy collisions and star formation processes in the cosmic realm. This groundbreaking discovery by Indian astronomers showcases the country’s prowess in the field of astrophysics and contributes to our understanding of the cosmic phenomena happening just beyond the Milky Way.
