When this image was first released maybe 10-12 years ago, it intrigued the bejezuz out of me. Partly because it’s just plain breathtaking, and partly because it tends to confirm a concept that I first read about in a kid’s book that my parents gave me back in the late ‘50s.
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This is a newly reprocessed version of the original Hubble image. The image itself was captured near the infrared spectrum; the same wavelength that the Webb Space Telescope will use exclusively to image deep-space objects. So if all goes well, we’ll be seeing a LOT more eye-popping stuff like this in the near future.
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So what’s going on here? What process of astrophysics could possibly explain a spiral in the sky?
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Try to imagine a binary star system (our galaxy has billions of them), with two stars locked in orbit around a shared gravitational point. Picture a dumbbell tumbling end over end in space, only one end is more massive than the other. The more massive star is drawing out a stream of hydrogen from its partner, and as the pair orbit each other, the stream gets thrown off into space (the two stars themselves are hidden by a dense debris cloud).
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NASA estimates the orbital period of the two stars—one complete revolution around their common gravitational point—to be roughly 800 years. The spiral, most of which isn’t visible, is 1/3rd of a light-year across; so about 2 TRILLION miles. If in fact the orbital period of the system is indeed 800 years, in theory, there should be an 800 year “gap” between each new winding of the spiral.
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Guess what? It checks out. Those spiral arms are being created in synch with each completed revolution of the binary system: once every 800 years, and with astonishing regularity. This is all taking place kinda’ far away, so it’s not as if we can waltz out there and confirm it. But short of any other theories, this seems most likely.
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I’ll post a picture from the kiddie book that my parents gave me at the top of this thread. It was published in 1956, by the way.
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Far out, huh? 🌀
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