This brand new image presents many tantalizing mysteries about UGC 5340 (otherwise known as DDO 68): an unusual dwarf galaxy found about 39 million light-years from Earth in the Leo constellation.
Because of the expansion of the universe, astronomers usually look at the most distant galaxies that still reside on this side of the light horizon — defined as the region in which enough time has passed for the light from distant objects to journey across 13 billion light-years of spacetime, to arrive at our proverbial front door — to see the universe as it was in its infancy. Counter-intuitively, this odd-ball galaxy, which is essentially our neighbor on a cosmic scale, bears many characteristics of a much younger galaxy (even more perplexing given the fact that all of the other galaxies located in its vicinity look their age).
So recently, Hubble aimed its powerful lens toward the galaxy in hopes of determining whether or not UGC 5340 is really as young as it appears to be. Their research was inconclusive, with the team saying:
“Elderly galaxies tend to be larger thanks to collisions and mergers with other galaxies that have bulked them out, and are populated with a variety of different types of stars — including old, young, large, and small ones. Their chemical makeup is different too. Newly-formed galaxies have a similar composition to the primordial matter created in the Big Bang (hydrogen, helium and a little lithium), while older galaxies are enriched with heavier elements forged in stellar furnaces over multiple generations of stars.”
“DDO 68 is the best representation yet of a primordial galaxy in the local Universe as it appears at first glance to be very low in heavier elements — whose presence would be a sign of the existence of previous generations of stars.”
“Hubble observations were carried out in order to study the properties of the galaxy’s light, and to confirm whether or not there are any older stars in DDO 68. If there are, which there seem to be, this would disprove the hypothesis that it is entirely made up of young stars. If not, it would confirm the unique nature of this galaxy. More complex modelling is needed before we can know for sure but Hubble’s picture certainly gives us a beautiful view of this unusual object.”
[Reference: Space Telescope]
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See a larger image here.