This is a photo of NGC 5584 and it is more than 50,000 light-years across and lies 72 million light-years away toward the constellation Virgo. This is an island universe and it has winding spiral arms that are filled with luminous young star clusters and dark dust lanes. It hosts some 250 Cepheid variable stars and a recent Type Ia supernova explosion, key objects for astronomical determinations. NGC 5584 is one of 8 galaxies used in a new study that includes additional Hubble Space Telescope observations to improve the measurement of Hubble's Constant (the expansion rate of the Universe). The results of the study allude to the theory that dark energy really is responsible for accelerating the expansion of the Universe, restricting models that try to explain the observed acceleration without the dark energy.
No comments:
Post a Comment