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Dwarf galaxies give universe a breath of fresh oxygen NASA NEWS RELEASE Posted: July 24, 2002 Astronomers have discovered that a nearby dwarf galaxy is spewing oxygen and other "heavy" elements into intergalactic space. This observation from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory supports the idea that dwarf galaxies might be responsible for most of the heavy elements between the galaxies.
A team led by Crystal Martin of the University of California, Santa Barbara, observed the dwarf galaxy NGC 1569 using Chandra. As reported in an article to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, the group found that huge quantities of oxygen and other heavy elements are escaping from the galaxy in bubbles of multimillion-degree gases thousands of light-years in diameter. "Dwarf galaxies are much smaller than ordinary galaxies like our Milky Way and much more common," said Martin. "Because of their small mass, they have relatively low gravity and matter can escape more easily from dwarfs than from normal galaxies. This makes them very important in understanding how the universe was seeded with various elements." Scientists have speculated that heavy elements escaping from dwarf galaxies in the early universe could play a dominant role in enriching the intergalactic gas from which other galaxies form. Enriched gas cools more quickly, so the rate and manner of formation of new galaxies in the early universe would have been strongly affected by this process. "With Chandra it was possible to test these ideas," said Henry Kobulnicky of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a member of the research team. "We could trace the distribution of oxygen and other elements in the galaxy and determine how much of this matter is escaping from the galaxy."
The team found large hot bubbles extending above and below a disk of gas along the equator of the galaxy. The measured concentration of oxygen, neon, magnesium and silicon showed that the elements from thousands of supernovas are evaporating out of the galaxy, carrying much of the surrounding gas with them. The astronomers estimate the bubbles are carrying away an amount of oxygen equivalent to that found in about three million Suns. In addition to Martin and Kobulnicky, Timothy Heckman of The
John Hopkins University in Baltimore, was part of the team
that observed NGC 1569 for 27.4 hours using the Advanced CCD
Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) on April 11, 2001. ACIS was built
for NASA by Penn State, University Park, and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., manages the
Chandra program for the Office of Space Science, Washington.
TRW, Inc., Redondo Beach, Calif., is the prime contractor for
the spacecraft. The Smithsonian's Chandra X-ray Center
controls science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
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