NASA / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured the celestial cannonball-like IC 3225, located approximately 100 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. This spiral galaxy is just one of over 1,300 members of the Virgo galaxy cluster.
The sheer density of galaxies in the Virgo cluster results in a rich field of hot gas between them, also referred to as the ‘intracluster medium’. This basically means the cluster’s extreme mass has its galaxies careening around its center in some very fast orbits.
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IC 3225 is not so close to the cluster core right now, but astronomers have deduced that it has undergone this ram pressure stripping in the past. The galaxy looks as though it’s been impacted by this: it is compressed on one side and there has been noticeably more star formation on this leading edge, while the opposite end is stretched out of shape,” said the ESA.
