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Galaxies a Trillion Times Brighter than the Sun Observed Inside Colossal Amoeba-Like Objects
Tuesday, July 23, 2013 2:13
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Galaxies a trillion times brighter than our Sun were observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope inside enormous blobs that were first found by visible-light telescopes, located billions of light-years away in ancient galactic structures or filaments, where thousands of young galaxies are clustered together.
These large, fuzzy galactic halos are made up of hot hydrogen gas and are about 10 times as large as the galaxies they encompass. Astronomers can see glowing blobs, but they don’t know what provides the energy to light them up. But they have a hunch.
Image credit: University of Tokyo Kiso Observatory.
Lyman-alpha blobs (shown above) are so called because they strongly emit radiation due to the Lyman-alpha emission line of hydrogen gas.
Normally, Lyman-alpha emission is in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, but Lyman-apha blobs are so distant, their light is redshifted to (longer) optical wavelengths.
