Astronomers Found New Galaxy With Heartbeat

Until recently, scientists had never taken into account the effect these older stars had on the light from distant galaxies as seen by Earthly telescopes.

Hubble Space Telescope photograph of the galaxy M87, which is 50 million light years from Earth. Using a novel technique, astronomers have detected thousands of stellar “pulses” in the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). This happens every few hundred days and in our Milky Way galaxy, a lot of the stars are recognized undergoing this phase. Their measurements offer a new way of determining a galaxy’s age.

Pieter van Dokkum, the Sol Goldman Professor and chair of astronomy at Yale, and also the co-author of the study said that the experts tends to believe that these galaxies acts as stable beacons in the sky. The astronomer team made a decision to see if they could be detected even when their light can’t be separated from that of the unchanging stars in their vicinity. Since our sun will go through this same phase when it nears the of its life cycle, the study offers a sneak-peak to the future that awaits our own solar system, he added.

Before this study, scientists had not considered the effects of pulsating stars on the light from distant galaxies. Astronomers have observed many of these stars pulsating in our galaxy.

Van Dokkum and his colleagues used a series of images Hubble captured of Messier 87 (M87), a supergiant elliptical galaxy located in the constellation Virgo.

“The stars in this galaxy probably formed a very long time ago – maybe 10 billion years ago – and if that’s true then this galaxy is a fossil relic from a much earlier time in the universe”, according to Conroy. They quickly found what they were looking for.

According to scientists, galaxies actually appear to be shimmering because of the massive pulsating stars within them, despite many people thinking of them as steady sources of light in the sky.

‘We realized that these stars are so bright and their pulsations so strong that they are hard to hide, ‘ said Charlie Conroy, an assistant professor at Harvard, who led the research. “This gives us a new tool to determine a galaxy’s age, which is especially important for ancient galaxies like M87”.

It’s as if we’re taking the pulse of the galaxy.

Analysis of the Hubble data showed that the average pixel varies on a timescale of approximately 270 days.

“The researchers” next move is to measure the pulse of more galaxies.

Conroy describes the regular changes in brightness as a heartbeat. The team said the M87, based on its pulses, is about 10 billion years old, and their estimate agrees with prior studies that use different techniques.

The discovery of stellar heartbeats should not be specific to M87; every galaxy in the universe likely shows similar distinctive patterns.

Astronomers found pulsating, older stars in the M87 galaxy.