The images were recently captured by the Jeanne Rich Telescope and the William Herschel Telescope. These types of phenomena are called stellar streams and this particular one is flowing through a cluster of galaxies 300 million light-years away.
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00:00 [Music]
00:04 This image was recently captured by the Gene Ridge Telescope and the William Herschel Telescope.
00:09 And what you're seeing is what astronomers are calling a river of stars,
00:13 the longest one ever observed by scientists.
00:16 These types of phenomena are called stellar streams,
00:18 and this particular one is flowing through a cluster of galaxies around 300 million light-years away.
00:23 And this one is epically long, 1.7 million light-years from end to end.
00:28 But what makes this one even more exceptional is where it is flowing.
00:32 As astronomers say, the galactic cluster in which it resides is extremely wild.
00:36 That's because galactic clusters are exactly what they sound like,
00:39 collections of galaxies which all have their own gravitational whims.
00:42 Meaning anything in between them, like, say, a stellar stream, can get ripped apart in the chaos.
00:47 Which is why the researchers weren't even looking for one here.
00:49 They were actually attempting to observe stellar halos.
00:52 So where does a stream like this one come from?
00:54 The experts say the chaos of this galactic cluster likely ripped a dwarf galaxy apart,
00:58 with its remains becoming the stellar stream.
01:00 With the astronomers saying they're lucky they captured it when they did,
01:03 because they don't expect it to last long.
01:07 [ Music ]