Hubble Telescope makes a 'ghostly' discovery billions of light years away

It appears that spooky goings-on over the Halloween period are not just confined to Earth. The Hubble Space Telescope has made its own ghostly discovery by capturing the ghost light from dead galaxies ripped apart billions of years ago.

The ghost light comes from stars that were ejected from ancient galaxies ripped apart by gravity. These orphaned stars are no longer attached to any one galaxy, and instead wander between nearby galaxies.

But dont worry, they wont be wandering over here any time soon. This epic galaxy death happened over four billion light years away in a large group of galaxies known as the Pandora cluster, or Abel 2744.

Hubble astronomers have turned detective and used the ground-breaking images to deduce the dead galaxies last movements. Their evidence suggests that as many as six galaxies were torn apart over a time period of six billion years.

These galaxies were probably about the same size as our own Milky Way. Such smaller galaxies would have had no chance as they plunged through the centre of the galaxy cluster where gravitational tidal forces are at their strongest.

The source of the ghost light is actually coming from an estimated200 billion outcast stars. They make up about 10% of the total light being emitted by the Pandora cluster.

Measurements taken by Hubble show that these stars are rich inheavier elements like oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. Thats a tell-tale sign that these are second or third-generation stars which have been enriched by elements that were originally created at the heart of the universes first-generation stars.

This kind of on-going star formation is most commonly found in spiral galaxies, which is where we think these orphan stars originated.

Well for a start its impressive that we even spotted these stars.

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Hubble Telescope makes a 'ghostly' discovery billions of light years away