The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an amazing new photo of a lenticular — or elliptical — galaxy called Messier 85.
This Hubble image shows Messier 85. The image includes infrared, visible and ultraviolet observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. O’Connell.
Located in the constellation Coma Berenices, Messier 85 is a member of the Virgo cluster of galaxies.
Also known as M85, NGC 4382 and LEDA 40515, the galaxy lies approximately 50 million light-years away from Earth.
It was first discovered by Charles Messier’s colleague Pierre Méchain on March 4, 1781.
His report on the discovery caused Charles Messier to investigate this nebulous object and this whole celestial region, and on March 18, 1781, Messier cataloged it as Messier 85, together with seven own discoveries of that night in the same area in the sky.
Messier 85 is intriguing — its properties lie somewhere between those of a lenticular and an elliptical galaxy.
And it appears to be interacting with two of its neighbors: the beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 4394, located out of frame to the upper left, and the small elliptical galaxy MCG 3-32-38, located out of frame to the center bottom.
About 4 billion to 7 billion years ago, Messier 85 likely merged with another galaxy.
It contains approximately 400 billion stars, and most of these stars are very old.
However, the central region hosts a population of relatively young stars, under 3 billion years old.
And these stars are thought to have formed in a late burst of star formation, likely triggered by the ancient merger.
Messier 85 has a further potentially strange quality.
Almost every galaxy is thought to have a supermassive black hole at its center, but from measurements of the velocities of stars in this galaxy, it is unclear whether Messier 85 contains such a black hole.
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