There's A New Cannibal Galaxy That's So Hungry, It's Eating Its Galactic Neighbors

There's a new cannibal galaxy and it's swallowing up its neighboring stars. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile has captured an image of Fornax Cluster, which consists of almost 60 galaxies 65 million light years from Earth. In the middle of that cluster is the hungry NGC 1399.

"The cluster plays host to a menagerie of galaxies of all shapes and sizes, some of which are hiding secrets," said the ESO in a news release.

This secret is a cD galaxy or "galactic cannibal" called NGC 1399. cD galaxies are usually located at the center of galaxy clusters and has an "extended stellar halo" that continually adds to the galaxy's mass by enveloping neighboring stars, according to Cosmos. cD galaxies are believed to have resulted from a lot of tiny galaxies that have fused together.

The cannibal galaxy, NGC 1399, attracts its prey stars by drawing them into the center of the galaxy cluster through gravitational force. Using the data from ESO, a group of astronomers from Italy has discovered that NGC 1399 actually has a parasitic behavior as it feeds off from a smaller galaxy, NGC 1387, in the cluster. The astronomers saw a "bridge" with blue light in NGC 1399, which, when analyzed, are in fact stars created by gas from what was once a part of NGC 1387.

ESO notes that this phenomenon in the universe is not that unique and is continually happening; however, we can't witness it because a high-powered telescope is needed in order to see such phenomenon. The said image of the new cannibal galaxy was captured by ESO's VLT Survey Telescope. Featuring a 256-megapixel camera, the VLT Survey Telescope is designed to "conduct large-scale surveys of the sky."

According to ESO, though galaxy clusters are quite common, this recent finding in the Fornax Cluster shows the power of gravitational force in a wider spectrum such as the universe.