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The elliptical galaxy NGC 1270 lies about 240 million light-years away. But it\u2019s not alone. It\u2019s part of the Perseus Cluster (Abell 426), the brightest X-ray object in the sky and one of the most massive objects in the Universe.<\/p>\n
NGC 1270 plays a starring role in a new image from the Gemini North telescope. However, the image doesn\u2019t show the dark matter that has a firm grip on the galaxy and the rest of the galaxies in the Perseus Cluster. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Ancient astronomers would be astounded by what we\u2019ve learned about the Universe. Even astronomers like Edwin Hubble from the 20th would be amazed at the power of our modern telescopes and what they\u2019ve shown us. At that time, distant galaxies appeared fuzzy and were called nebulae. Even the nature of Andromeda, our closest galactic neighbour, was uncertain. In 1920, Hubble and others were debating whether Andromeda and other objects they were seeing were small objects in the Milky Way\u2019s outer regions, nebulae, or other galaxies. <\/p>\n German philosopher and Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant coined the term \u2018island Universes\u2019 to describe all these fuzzy objects, hinting at their true nature. The idea of other galaxies beyond our own dates back a long way, but there was no way to test it. Then, in 1924, Edwin Hubble ended the debate. He was able to show that individual stars in some of these so-called \u201cnebulae\u201d were actually far beyond the Milky Way. <\/p>\n The discovery was decisive, and we now know that the Universe is populated by hundreds of billions or even trillions of other galaxies like our own Milky Way. <\/p>\n \n