Dwarf galaxy breathes oxygen into cosmos

The Chandra space telescope's view of dwarf galaxy NGC 1569

(CNN) -- A dwarf galaxy is churning out huge stores of oxygen and other heavy elements, providing cosmic nutrients that could play a critical role in the formation of other galaxies, astronomers said.

Known as NGC 1569, the small galaxy has two giant bubbles extending in opposite directions that transport into the intergalactic medium an estimated 3 million times the oxygen found in the sun.

While superheated to millions of degrees, such heavy-element brews cool quickly and enrich gas clouds between the galaxies, according to researchers.

"Because of their small mass, they [dwarf galaxies] have relatively low gravity, and matter can escape more easily from dwarfs than from normal galaxies," said lead scientist Crystal Martin of the University of California, Santa Barbara, in a statement.

"This makes them very important in understanding how the universe was seeded with various elements."

While much smaller than conventional galaxies such as the Milky Way, the dwarfs are much more numerous. Previous dwarf galaxies could have spit out similar nutrient-rich clouds, influencing the evolution of galaxies in the early universe, the research team said.

The scientists looked at NGC 1569 with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a powerful space telescope that allowed them to study the chemical factory in great detail.

"We could trace the distribution of oxygen and other elements in the galaxy and determine how much of this matter is escaping," said team researcher Henry Kobulnicky of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

NGC 1569, which resides roughly 7 million light-years away from Earth, has experienced a rash of star births and deaths in the past 15 million years or so.

The exploding death stars, or supernovas, unleash superheated emissions of heavy elements such as oxygen, neon, magnesium and silicon, which bubble off the galaxy at speeds of hundreds of thousands of miles per hour, astronomers said.

The heavy elements, which include all the elements except for hydrogen and helium, account for only a small percentage of the known matter in the cosmos. Besides playing a major part in the formation of galaxies, they are instrumental in the formation of planets.

The team's findings will be published in an upcoming edition of The Astrophysical Journal.