Enlarge / X-ray emissions (purple) superimposed on a visible light image of a galaxy shows the galaxy winds being launched. (credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/The Ohio State Univ/S. Lopez et al.; H-alpha and Optical: NSF/NOIRLab/AURA/KPNO/CTIO; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Spitzer/D. Dale et al; Full Field Optical: ESO/La Silla Observatory.)
One of the ways massive stars, those at least 10-times bigger than the Sun, reach their end is in a supernova—an enormous explosion caused by the star’s core running out of fuel.
One consequence of a supernova is the production of galactic winds, which play a key role in regulating star formation. Although galactic winds have already been observed in several nearby galaxies, a team of scientists has now made the first direct observations of this phenomenon in a large population of galaxies in the distant Universe, at a time when galaxies are in their early stages of formation.
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According to the study’s lead author, Yucheng Guo, of the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon, galactic winds are an important part of the galaxy evolution models.
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