{"id":269566,"date":"2025-11-08T08:26:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T08:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/269566\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T08:26:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T08:26:14","slug":"surprise-tail-found-on-an-iconic-galaxy-may-rewrite-its-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/269566\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprise \u2018tail\u2019 found on an iconic galaxy may rewrite its history"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"Galaxy M61 with stellar stream surrounded by black and grey splotches\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/d41586-025-03665-6_51683614.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure__caption u-sans-serif\">Galaxy M61 sports a long stellar stream, which had not been spotted before now.Credit: NSF\u2013DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory\/NOIRLab\/SLAC\/AURA\/A. Romanowsky et. al.<\/p>\n<p>Mere months after its long-awaited debut, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-025-01798-2\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-025-01798-2\" data-track-category=\"body text link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Vera C. Rubin Observatory<\/a> is beginning to deliver on its promise to rewrite cosmic history. The observatory\u2019s colossal camera \u2014 perched atop a mountain in Chile \u2014 has yet to begin its official scientific survey. But just by perusing its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-025-01973-5\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-025-01973-5\" data-track-category=\"body text link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">first test image<\/a>, astronomers have uncovered a surprise: a trail of light \u2014 called a stellar stream \u2014 extending from a well-known galaxy, suggesting that the galaxy once tore apart a much smaller one.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first stellar stream detected from Rubin,\u201d says Sarah Pearson, an astrophysicist at the University of Copenhagen. \u201cAnd it\u2019s just a precursor for all of the many, many features we\u2019ll find like this.\u201d The authors reported their findings in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society<a href=\"#ref-CR1\" data-track=\"click\" data-action=\"anchor-link\" data-track-label=\"go to reference\" data-track-category=\"references\">1<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A tail that tells tales<\/p>\n<p>The galaxy, named Messier 61, was first spotted in 1779 in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies and has caught the gaze of astronomers ever since. Hosting a slew of supernovae and churning out new stars at a surprisingly high rate, Messier 61 is what\u2019s known as a starburst galaxy owing to its bounty of stellar activity.<\/p>\n<p>Astronomers have enlisted some powerhouse telescopes \u2014 including the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope \u2014 to unravel the galaxy\u2019s structure. But \u201cdespite all of this intense study, no one had ever found this stellar stream\u201d, says Aaron Romanowsky, an astronomer at San Jose State University in California and an author of the study.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-025-01798-2\" class=\"u-link-inherit\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-label=\"recommended article\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"recommended__image\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/d41586-025-03665-6_51293890.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"recommended__title u-serif\">Major telescope hosts world\u2019s largest digital camera: how it will transform astronomy<\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Galaxy M61 sports a long stellar stream, which had not been spotted before now.Credit: NSF\u2013DOE Vera C. Rubin&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[123777,123778,49,48,1099,1100,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-269566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-astronomical-instrumentation","9":"tag-astronomy-and-astrophysics","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","13":"tag-multidisciplinary","14":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}