Researchers from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have taken images of the most-crowded light year in our universe according to a press release from the administration..
"Traveling from one star to another would be a lot easier in M60-UCD1 than it is in our galaxy, but it would still take hundreds of years using present technology," Jay Strader of Michigan State University said in a statement.
Strader is also the lead author of a paper about the research, which was published Sept. 20 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The Hubble Space Telescope first noticed the record-setting galaxy, which according to the images, has more than half of its mass within 80 light years the press release reported. The stars in the galaxy also appear to be roughly 25 times closer than those in the milky way. The formation is also believed to be 10 billion years old.
"The abundance of heavy elements in this galaxy makes it a fertile environment for planets and, potentially, for life to form," Anil Seth of the University of Utah said in a statement.
Along with the crowded galaxy, the images also depict a possible black hole, which researchers estimate is 10 million times the mass of the sun. If the black hole is part of the picture, then researches would conclude the galaxy did not make a star cluster since black holes do not have any.
NASA's observatory and telescope are two out of four of its observatories. The others include the Spitzer Space Telescope and Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
"We think nearly all of the stars have been pulled away from the exterior of what once was a much bigger galaxy," Duncan Forbes of the Swinburne University in Australia and another co-author of the paper. "This leaves behind just the very dense nucleus of the former galaxy, and an overly massive black hole."
