The beautiful galaxy with an unpronounceable name
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NASAs Hubble Telescope has captured the image of a beautiful galaxy, but its convoluted moniker will be difficult for most to remember.
Although easy to remember monikers are often applied to celestial bodies, nebulas and black holes their technical names are often a complex insight into the terrestrial longitude and latitude of the celestial bodies.
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A new galaxy which has been given the catchy name 2XMM J143450.5+033843 was first spotted by the xmm-newton observatory which is part of the European Space Agency – this observatory gave the opening to this galaxy’s long name. For those of you who would like to decipher the rest of the moniker, NASA have disclosed the meaning of the galaxy’s name as follows:
‘…the rest of the bulky name, following the “J”: a right ascension value of 14h (hours) 34m (minutes) 50.5s (seconds). This can be likened to terrestrial longitude. It also has a declination of +03d (degrees) 38m (minutes) 43s (seconds). Declination can be likened to terrestrial latitude’ (NASA, 2017)
The beautiful galaxy belongs to a category of galaxies know as Seyfert galaxies, which means it has an active galactic nucleus. This means that the galaxy is revolving around a supermassive black hole that emits vast amounts of energy, in the form of x-rays. The galaxy is approximately 400 million light years from earth, and for star gazers, its position can be easily gleaned from its name.
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