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Tour of NGC 4258 (M106)
Quicktime MPEG With closed-captions (at YouTube)
NGC 4258, also known as Messier 106, is a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way. This galaxy is famous, however, for something that our Galaxy doesn’t have – two extra spiral arms that glow in X-ray, optical, and radio light. These features, or anomalous arms, are not aligned with the plane of the galaxy, but instead intersect with it. The X-ray image from Chandra reveals huge bubbles of hot gas above and below the plane of the galaxy. These bubbles indicate that much of the gas that was originally in the disk of the galaxy has been heated to millions of degrees and ejected into the outer regions by the jets from the black hole. The ejection of gas from the disk by the jets has important implications for the fate of this galaxy. Researchers estimate that all of the remaining gas will be ejected within the next 300 million years -- very soon on cosmic time scales – unless it is somehow replenished. Without this gas, relatively few stars can form there. In fact, scientists estimate that that star formation in the central region of NGC 4258 is already being choked off, with stars forming at a rate ten times less than in the Milky Way galaxy.
[Runtime: 01:42]
Quicktime MPEG With closed-captions (at YouTube)
NGC 4258, also known as Messier 106, is a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way. This galaxy is famous, however, for something that our Galaxy doesn’t have – two extra spiral arms that glow in X-ray, optical, and radio light. These features, or anomalous arms, are not aligned with the plane of the galaxy, but instead intersect with it. The X-ray image from Chandra reveals huge bubbles of hot gas above and below the plane of the galaxy. These bubbles indicate that much of the gas that was originally in the disk of the galaxy has been heated to millions of degrees and ejected into the outer regions by the jets from the black hole. The ejection of gas from the disk by the jets has important implications for the fate of this galaxy. Researchers estimate that all of the remaining gas will be ejected within the next 300 million years -- very soon on cosmic time scales – unless it is somehow replenished. Without this gas, relatively few stars can form there. In fact, scientists estimate that that star formation in the central region of NGC 4258 is already being choked off, with stars forming at a rate ten times less than in the Milky Way galaxy.
[Runtime: 01:42]
(Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)
Return to NGC 4258 (M106) (July 2, 2014)
Revised: July 06, 2023