Galaxy With A ‘Heartbeat’: Astronomers Find A Pulse On Distant Galaxy

With the Messier 87 elliptical galaxy, the astronomers used its stars’ pulses to age the galaxy at 10 billion years, which backs up previous research. While previously unnoticed, the stars were observed to project a bright light that can distinguish them from the other stars in the galaxy, engulfing them in their light. The galaxy was identified as M87, which is found in the constellation Virgo.

Till now, scientists had not measured the influence of these older stars on the light from distant galaxies that were visible through the earth’s telescopes.

Astronomers have discovered a galaxy with a “heartbeat” and have taken its pulse, according to a study by Yale and Harvard researchers.

Using images from the Hubble Space Telescope taken over a three-month period in 2006, the researchers studied the galaxy M87.

Thousands of pulses in the region were detected, and scientists who wrote the study are saying that the technique offers a new way of determining the age of one galaxy. And as the star grows in brightness, it begins to pulsate. Looking at a galaxy is like looking down on a terrestrial city from space: we can see the stellar downtowns and suburbs, and even the layout of a few neighborhoods, but we generally don’t notice the effect of individual families turning their lights on and off.

“This is because the rare, pulsating stars emit so much light that their pulsations can be measured even though each of them is surrounded by a million stars that don’t change”, van Dokkum said. The team is planning to search for and measure the pulsations in alternate galaxies.

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.

As these galaxies continue to age, their heartbeats will most likely get weaker, but researchers are confident they will continue to “beat” for a while longer. He is also the co-author of the published paper in the Journal Nature.

Until now, no one had considered the effects of these stars on the light coming from more distant galaxies. They were able to analyze the Hubble images showing the variation of average pixel on a timescale of approximately 270 days. The pulsation refers to sudden changes in a star’s brightness.

But astronomers at Yale and Harvard realized that these pulsating stars are so strong, and “they’re hard to hide”, says lead author Charlie Conroy.

“Our models suggest that the pulsations will be stronger in younger galaxies, and that’s something we’d love to test”, Jieun Choi, a graduate student at Harvard and a co-author of the study, said in a statement.

Definitely the older galaxies will keep beating for a while longer and a “Cardiac arrest is not going to happen until a trillion years from now, stated van Dokkum”.