Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2015

30 SPACE CHRONICLES The galaxy is being stripped of most of its gas — the fuel needed to make the next generations of young blue stars. ESO 137-001 is in the midst of this galactic makeover, and is being transformed from a blue gas-rich gal- axy to a gas-poor red one. Scientists propose that the observed process will help to solve a long-standing scientific riddle. “It is one of the ma- jor tasks of modern astronomy to T his image combines NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observa- tions with data from the Chandra X- ray Observatory. As well as the electric blue ram pressure stripping streaks seen emanating from ESO 137-001, a giant gas stream can be seen extend- ing towards the bottom of the frame, only visible in the X-ray part of the spectrum. [NASA, ESA, CXC] hair back when it sticks its head out of the window of a moving car. In this case the gas is part of the vast cloud of very thin hot gas that is enveloping the galaxy cluster into which ESO 137-001 is falling at sev- eral million kilometres per hour. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided a spectacular image of this object but, unlike MUSE, cannot reveal the motions of the material.