Astronomers capture most detailed thousand-color image of the Sculptor galaxy
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Astronomers capture most detailed thousand-color image of the Sculptor galaxy
Astronomers capture most detailed thousand-color image of the Sculptor galaxy. Regions of pink light are spread throughout this whole galactic snapshot, which come from ionized hydrogen in star-forming regions. These areas have been overlaid on a map of already formed stars in Sc sculptor to create the mix of pinks and blues seen here.Future projects using the map will explore how gas flows, changes its composition, and forms stars all across this galaxy. The team uncovered around 500 planetary nebulae, regions of gas and dust cast off from dying sun-like stars, in the Sc sculpturesor galaxy, which is 11 million light-years away in the constellation of Scorpio. The researchers observed the galaxy for over 50 hours with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s VLT. They had to stitch together over 100 exposures to cover an area of the galaxy about 65 000 light- years wide.
A detailed, thousand-color image of the Sculptor Galaxy captured with the MUSE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Regions of pink light are spread throughout this whole galactic snapshot, which come from ionized hydrogen in star-forming regions. These areas have been overlaid on a map of already formed stars in Sculptor to create the mix of pinks and blues seen here. Credit: ESO/E. Congiu et al.
Astronomers have created a galactic masterpiece: an ultra-detailed image that reveals previously unseen features in the Sculptor galaxy. Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), they observed this nearby galaxy in thousands of colors simultaneously. By capturing vast amounts of data at every single location, they created a galaxy-wide snapshot of the lives of stars within Sculptor.
“Galaxies are incredibly complex systems that we are still struggling to understand,” says ESO researcher Enrico Congiu, who led a new Astronomy & Astrophysics study on Sculptor. Reaching hundreds of thousands of light-years across, galaxies are extremely large, but their evolution depends on what’s happening at much smaller scales.
“The Sculptor galaxy is in a sweet spot,” says Congiu. “It is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible detail, but at the same time, big enough that we can still see it as a whole system.”
A galaxy’s building blocks—stars, gas and dust—emit light at different colors. Therefore, the more shades of color there are in an image of a galaxy, the more we can learn about its inner workings. While conventional images contain only a handful of colors, this new Sculptor map comprises thousands. This tells astronomers everything they need to know about the stars, gas and dust within, such as their age, composition, and motion.
To create this map of the Sculptor galaxy, which is 11 million light-years away and is also known as NGC 253, the researchers observed it for over 50 hours with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s VLT. The team had to stitch together over 100 exposures to cover an area of the galaxy about 65 000 light-years wide.
Color images of NGC 253 produced by combining broad-band images and emission line maps extracted from the MUSE data cube. Credit: Astronomy & Astrophysics https://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso2510/eso2510a.pdf
According to co-author Kathryn Kreckel from Heidelberg University, Germany, this makes the map a potent tool. “We can zoom in to study individual regions where stars form at nearly the scale of individual stars, but we can also zoom out to study the galaxy as a whole.”
In their first analysis of the data, the team uncovered around 500 planetary nebulae, regions of gas and dust cast off from dying sun-like stars, in the Sculptor galaxy.
Co-author Fabian Scheuermann, a doctoral student at Heidelberg University, puts this number into context: “Beyond our galactic neighborhood, we usually deal with fewer than 100 detections per galaxy.”
Because of the properties of planetary nebulae, they can be used as distance markers to their host galaxies.
“Finding the planetary nebulae allows us to verify the distance to the galaxy—a critical piece of information on which the rest of the studies of the galaxy depend,” says Adam Leroy, a professor at The Ohio State University, U.S., and study co-author.
Future projects using the map will explore how gas flows, changes its composition, and forms stars all across this galaxy. “How such small processes can have such a big impact on a galaxy whose entire size is thousands of times bigger is still a mystery,” says Congiu.
More information: E. Congiu, et al. The MUSE view of the Sculptor galaxy: survey overview and the
planetary nebulae luminosity function. Astronomy & Astrophysics (2025). www.eso.org/public/archives/re … eso2510/eso2510a.pdf Journal information: Astronomy & Astrophysics
Feast Your Eyes On The Most Detailed 1,000-Color Image Of A Nearby Galaxy
The Sculptor galaxy is 11 million light-years away. It was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783. New map contains thousands of colors. Team plans to understand the gas flows, their evolution, and where and how this gas ends up forming stars. The team used over 50 hours with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. More than 100 exposures were stitched in this glorious new map of the Sc sculptor galaxy. It’s not just the end of stars but also the beginning, studying the details of star formation at a level that has not been possible before for galaxies beyond the local group. The observations cover an area of the galaxy 65,000 light years across. The researchers confirmed around 500 planetary nebulae, the regions of dust and gas that dying stars create by shedding stellar material.
Most astronomical images use wide-band filters that capture light across a large range of wavelengths. These can be, for example, red, blue, or green. But a lot of astronomical events emit at specific wavelengths, so using those allows you to distinguish specific emissions; or speaking in colors, your ruby from your rose or your cerulean from your lapis.
To make this thousand-color map, astronomers used over 50 hours with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. More than 100 exposures were stitched in this glorious new map of the Sculptor galaxy.
The pink light comes from ionized hydrogen in star-forming regions overlaid on a map of already formed stars (blue). Image credit: ESO/E. Congiu et al.
“Galaxies are incredibly complex systems that we are still struggling to understand. The Sculptor Galaxy is in a sweet spot,” lead author ESO researcher Enrico Congiu said in a statement. “It is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible detail, but at the same time, big enough that we can still see it as a whole system.”
The observations cover an area of the galaxy 65,000 light-years across. Among the first studies of the map, the team looked for planetary nebulae, the regions of dust and gas that dying stars like the Sun create by shedding stellar material. The researchers confirmed around 500 in the Sculptor Galaxy, a record number that will have larger repercussions due to their milestone-like properties.
“Beyond our galactic neighbourhood, we usually deal with fewer than 100 detections per galaxy,” co-author Fabian Scheuermann, from Heidelberg University, puts the number into context.
“Finding the planetary nebulae allows us to verify the distance to the galaxy — a critical piece of information on which the rest of the studies of the galaxy depend,” added co-author Professor Adam Leroy, from Ohio State University.
This false-color composition shows wavelengths of light released by hydrogen (in an artistic pink rather than its actual blueish color), nitrogen (red), sulphur (yellow), and oxygen (green). The cone of white light is the outflow of gas from the galaxy’s central black hole. Image credit: ESO/E. Congiu et al.
It’s not just the end of stars but also the beginning, studying the details of star formation at a level that has not been possible before for galaxies beyond the local group.
“We can zoom in to study individual regions where stars form at nearly the scale of individual stars, but we can also zoom out to study the galaxy as a whole,” added Kathryn Kreckel from Heidelberg University.
This is just the beginning. The team plans to understand the gas flows, their evolution, and where and how this gas ends up forming stars. “How such small processes can have such a big impact on a galaxy whose entire size is thousands of times bigger is still a mystery,” added Congiu.
A paper describing the results is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2025-06-astronomers-capture-thousand-image-sculptor.html