It’s good to know that even 500 million light years away there are galaxies a long, long time ago that are familiar with the Star Wars story. The light from one of those distant galaxies has made it to earth, and there’s no doubt it looks a lot like Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter.
The galaxy, known as TXS 0128+554, is 500 million light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. TXS 0128+554 is considered an active galaxy, as it emits more light than all of its stars together. In 2015, researchers found TXS 0128+554 was a “faint source of gamma rays,” but it wasn’t until recently that they went in for a closer look.
“After the Fermi announcement, we zoomed in a million times closer on the galaxy using the [Very Long Baseline Array’s] radio antennas and charted its shape over time,” said Purdue University professor and study lead author Matthew Lister in a statement. “The first time I saw the results, I immediately thought it looked like Darth Vader’s TIE fighter spacecraft from ‘Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.’ That was a fun surprise, but its appearance at different radio frequencies also helped us learn more about how active galaxies can change dramatically on decade time scales.”
TXS 0128+554 has a “supermassive black hole” that is believed to be 1 billion times the sun’s mass, which may provide a reason for the gamma-ray emissions.
The galaxy is also producing two jets, “beams of high-energy particles traveling at nearly the speed of light in opposite directions,” that give it the TIE fighter-like appearance. It’s believed these jets may be producing some of the gamma-ray emissions.
