Perseus A Galaxy Spreads Filaments
20000 Light-years Long Filaments
NGC 1275 (also known as Perseus A or Caldwell 24) is a type 1.5 Seyfert galaxy located in the direction of the Perseus Constellation. NGC 1275 corresponds to the radio galaxy Perseus A and is situated near the centre of the large Perseus Cluster of galaxies. It is morphologically a type-cD galaxy.
NGC 1275 consists of two galaxies, the central cD Galaxy in the Perseus Cluster, and the so-called “high velocity system” (HVS) which lies in front of it. The HVS is moving at 3000 km/s towards the dominant system, and is believed to be merging with the Perseus Cluster. The HVS is not affecting the cD Galaxy as it lies at least 200 thousand light years from it. The central cluster galaxy contains a massive network of spectral line emitting filaments, which appear to be being dragged out by rising bubbles of relativistic plasma generated by the central active galactic nucleus. Long gaseous filaments made up of threads of gas stretch out beyond the galaxy, into the multimillion-degree, X-ray emitting gas that fills the cluster. The amount of gas contained in a typical thread is approximately one million times the mass of our own Sun. They are only 200 light-years wide, are often very straight, and extend for up to 20,000 light-years.
The existence of the filaments in NGC 1275 poses a problem. Being much cooler than the surrounding intergalactic cloud, several questions are being raised by astronomers. How have they persisted for perhaps 100 million years? Why haven’t they warmed, dissipated or collapsed to form stars? One possibility is that weak magnetic fields (about one-ten-thousandth the strength of Earth’s field) exert enough force on the ions within the threads to keep them together.
Distance from Earth: ~ 273 million light years.
Click below for full resolution picture of NGC 1275
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