{"id":439155,"date":"2018-02-09T10:32:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T14:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?guid=3b1eccde3055ebbc394c75fc4979bc91"},"modified":"2018-02-09T10:32:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-09T14:32:00","slug":"the-loneliest-firework-display","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=439155","title":{"rendered":"The loneliest firework display"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2018\/02\/the_loneliest_firework_display\/17371904-1-eng-GB\/The_loneliest_firework_display_small.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nRoughly 50 million light-years away lies a somewhat overlooked little galaxy named NGC 1559. Pictured here by Hubble\u2019s Wide Field Camera 3, this barred spiral&nbsp;lies in the little-observed southern constellation of Reticulum(The Reticule).\n<\/p>\n<p>\nNGC 1559 has massive spiral arms chock-full of star formation, and is receding from us at a speed of about 1300 km\/s. The galaxy contains the mass of around ten billion Suns \u2014 while this may sound like a lot, that is almost 100 times less massive than the Milky Way. Although NGC 1559 appears to sit near one of our nearest neighbours in the sky \u2014 the Large Magellanic Cloud&nbsp;(LMC), this is just a trick of perspective. In reality, NGC 1559 is physically nowhere near the LMC in space \u2014 in fact, it truly is a loner, lacking the company of any nearby galaxies or membership of any galaxy cluster.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nDespite its lack of cosmic companions, when this lonely galaxy has a telescope pointed in its direction, it puts on quite a show! NGC 1559 has hosted a variety of spectacular exploding stars called supernovae, four of which we have observed \u2014 in 1984, 1986, 2005, and 2009 (SN 1984J, 1986L, 2005df&nbsp;[a Type Ia], and 2009ib [a Type II-P, with an unusually long plateau]).\n<\/p>\n<p>\nNGC 1559 may be alone in space, but we are watching and admiring from far away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2018\/02\/the_loneliest_firework_display\/17371904-1-eng-GB\/The_loneliest_firework_display_small.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\"><\/p>\n<p>\nRoughly 50 million light-years away lies a somewhat overlooked little galaxy named NGC 1559. Pictured here by Hubble&rsquo;s Wide Field Camera 3, this barred spiral&nbsp;lies in the little-observed southern constellation of Reticulum(The Reticule).\n<\/p>\n<p>\nNGC 1559 has massive spiral arms chock-full of star formation, and is receding from us at a speed of about 1300 km\/s. The galaxy contains the mass of around ten billion Suns &mdash; while this may sound like a lot, that is almost 100 times less massive than the Milky Way. Although NGC 1559 appears to sit near one of our nearest neighbours in the sky &mdash; the Large Magellanic Cloud&nbsp;(LMC), this is just a trick of perspective. In reality, NGC 1559 is physically nowhere near the LMC in space &mdash; in fact, it truly is a loner, lacking the company of any nearby galaxies or membership of any galaxy cluster.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nDespite its lack of cosmic companions, when this lonely galaxy has a telescope pointed in its direction, it puts on quite a show! NGC 1559 has hosted a variety of spectacular exploding stars called supernovae, four of which we have observed &mdash; in 1984, 1986, 2005, and 2009 (SN 1984J, 1986L, 2005df&nbsp;[a Type Ia], and 2009ib [a Type II-P, with an unusually long plateau]).\n<\/p>\n<p>\nNGC 1559 may be alone in space, but we are watching and admiring from far away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=439155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":439156,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439155\/revisions\/439156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=439155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=439155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=439155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}