For years , astronomers think that a beetleweed drift 100 million light - year off was a single ethereal aim , a perfectly on - edge coiling galaxy with a stupendous jet streaming away from it . But it ’s all just an optic semblance — and a rather massive one at that .
Ina statement released by NASA yesterday , the space agency conceded that , “ New data from the National Science Foundation ’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array ( VLA ) break that two galaxy , one lying behind the other , have been masquerade as one . ”
The closest of the two galaxies , the spiral UGC 10288 , is 100 million lite - age aside . But behind it , at the astonishing distance of 7 billion lightyears , is a partially befog galaxy that ’s shooting two giant jets — but only one can be look . The electric arc - alike feature rises more than 11,000 lightyears above the record .
Previous radio images of the two beetleweed made it look like one fuzzy blob , fooling astronomer into thinking they were looking at one galaxy . But thanks to the VLA , the scientist can now peer behind this galactic veil . Measurements made by Spitzer and WISE revealed new structures above and below the planing machine of the airless galaxy ’s disk .
“ We can use the radio wave from the background wandflower , descend through the nearer one , as a way to measure the properties of the nearer galaxy , ” note Canadian astronomer Judith Irwin in the NASA departure . She is the lead writer of a late paper on the finding , which now appears onlinein the Astronomical Journal .
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