The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy: Messier 83 in Hydra | Danish 1.54-meter Telescope

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy: Messier 83 in Hydra | Danish 1.54-meter Telescope

Located about 15 million light-years away towards the Hydra (the sea serpent) constellation, Messier 83 is a nearby face-on barred spiral with a classic grand design form. It is the main member of a small galactic group including NGC 5253 and about 9 dwarf galaxies. Messier 83 stretches over 40,000 light-years, making it roughly 2.5 times smaller than our own Milky Way. However, Messier 83 is quite similar to our own galaxy. The Milky Way and Messier 83 possess a bar across their galactic nucleus, the dense spherical conglomeration of stars seen at the center of the galaxies.

Messier 83 has been a prolific producer of supernovae with six observed in the past century. This is indicative of an exceptionally high rate of star formation coinciding with its classification as a starburst galaxy. Despite its symmetric appearance, the central 1,000 light-years of the galaxy shows an unusually high level of complexity, containing both a double nucleus and a double circumnuclear starburst ring. The nature of the double nucleus is uncertain but the off center nucleus could be a remnant core of a small galaxy that merged with Messier 83 in the past. The star clusters in the nuclear starburst rings are mostly young stars between 5 and 10 million years old. 

This image is based on data acquired with the 1.5-meter Danish telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, through three filters (B, V, R).

Learn about the Danish 1.54-meter telescope: https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/lasilla/danish154/

Credit: ESO/IDA/Danish 1.5 m/R. Gendler, S. Guisard and C. Thöne
Release Date: Dec. 3, 2009

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