The Sunburst galaxy is a strongly magnified

galaxy A galaxy is a Physical system, system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar medium, interstellar gas, cosmic dust, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek ' (), literally 'milky', ...

at redshift z=2.38 (10.9 billion

light year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distance, astronomical distances and is equal to exactly , which is approximately 9.46 trillion km or 5.88 trillion mi. As defined by t ...

s) behind the galaxy cluster PSZ1 G311.65-18.48. The cluster acts as a power magnifier thanks to the

gravitational lensing A gravitational lens is matter, such as a galaxy cluster, cluster of galaxies or a point particle, that bends light from a distant source as it travels toward an observer. The amount of gravitational lensing is described by Albert Einstein's Ge ...

effect. The galaxy cluster distorts the space around it creating different paths for the

photon A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless particles that can ...

s coming from the Sunburst galaxy. This lensing creates four arc segment roughly following a circle around the foreground lensing cluster. Chance alignments of the Sunburst Galaxy and galaxies in the lensing cluster breaks up some of the arc segments into multiple smaller images, creating a total of 12 full or partial images of the galaxy along the arc; some of these images are magnified by very large factors. In one of these strongly magnified images of the Sunburst galaxy, astronomers have identified the most luminous star known to date,

Godzilla is a fictional monster, or ''kaiju'', that debuted in the eponymous 1954 film, directed and co-written by Ishirō Honda. The character has since become an international pop culture icon, appearing in various media: 33 Japanese films p ...

. Another study suggests that Godzilla is a compact young massive star cluster that consists of thousands of bright stars and is magnified by a factor between about 500 and 2000. Emission from Godzilla's nebula indicates unusually pressurized ionized gas highly enriched with nitrogen. The Sunburst galaxy hosts a massive star cluster that is only 2-4 Myr after formation. The star cluster is very compact, weighing tens of millions of solar masses while having a radius no larger than 10 parsecs. The star cluster is seen to be leaking ionizing radiation into the intergalactic space. In its vicinity, the star cluster excites a dense nebula that is enriched with nitrogen and is likely to have condensed from massive star wind material.

References

External links

The Sunburst Arc in SIMBAD
{{Apus Galaxies Gravitational lensing Apus