Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, was scanned by NASA through Nuclear Spectroscopic Space Telescope Array (NuSTAR). The findings in the image produced by NuSTAR should help the space agency understand the role of X-ray binaries.
NASA's NuSTAR observatory pinned down 40 previously uknown X-ray binaries around Andromeda galaxy. X-ray binaries are sources of X-rays that make up either a black hole or a neutron star and a companion star.
"Andromeda is the only large spiral galaxy where we can see individual X-ray binaries and study them in detail in an environment like our own," Daniel Wik, an assistant research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said.
Scientists believe that these may be key parts in heating up clouds of gas that came out after the Big Bang. These gases are believed to aid the creation of the first galaxies in the universe.
The Andromed galaxy is 2.5 million light-years away from the Milky Way. This is relatively "close" in terms of celestial measurements. Analyzing these X-ray binaries will allow the scientists to use the insights they gathered from observing the X-ray binaries in creating models of galaxies that are too distant and/or not easily observed even through powerful microscopes.
The team hopes to identify the 40 X-ray binaries whether they are coming from black holes feeding of some stellar material or they are denoting the presence of a neutron star.
"We have come to realize in the past few years that it is likely the lower-mass remnants of normal stellar evolution, the black holes and neutron stars, may play a crucial role in heating of the intergalactic gas at very early times in the universe, around the cosmic dawn," Ann Hornschemeier of NASA Goddard, the principal investigator of the NuSTAR Andromeda studies, said.
Aside from the Andromeda galaxy's X-ray binaries, the NuSTAR also captured images of the Sun in high-energy X-ray back in December 2014.
