Tuesday, June 04, 2002
Galactic tidal tails
Image from MPIA press release
Galactic cannibalism Michael Odenkirchen and Eva Grebel of the MPIA have taken data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to create an image of a globular cluster, Palomar 5, which the Milky Way is tearing apart as they pass each other. The tails of the cluster were detected in some of the early data from the survey a couple of years ago. Now the surrounding stars have been filtered out to create the image of them and expanding data in the survey shows that that the tails reach longer than originally thought.
Image from MPIA press release
See also: Palomar 5: A Globular Cluster Torn Apart By The Milky Way (note: this page uses the classic encryption method of black text on a background image of deep space. You may need to "select all" to read it).
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