Background Facts:
- Name - NGC 4631 or Whale Galaxy.
- Appearance - looks like a fish (herring) or whale.
- Spiral galaxy towards the small northern constellation Canes Venatici.
- Seen edge-on from earth.
- Only 25 million light-years away.
- Similar in size to our own Milky Way.
- Contains a central starburst, i.e. intense star formation.
- The evidence for strong star formation comes from the detection of the emission spectrum for ionized hydrogen.
- It is known that massive stars, that form in star formation regions, only burn hydrogen gas through fusion for a short period of time.
- Following this initial hydrogen gas consumption the massive stars explode as supernovae.
- There have been so many supernovae which have exploded in the center of NGC 4631 that it is blowing gas out of the plane of the galaxy producing a superwind.
Image Credit - by Anttler public domain.
Posted by ALCHEssMIST.
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