The Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of a “monstrous merger” of two galaxies, NASA and the European Space Agency announced.
This image shows a “strange” galaxy, Arp 122. It actually consists of two galaxies colliding in a “dramatic cosmic encounter” about 570 million light-years from Earth. NASA and ESA announced on Friday.
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of Arp 122, a unique galaxy made up of two galaxies in the midst of a collision: NGC 6040 and LEDA 59642. This encounter is approximately 570 million light-years from Earth. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; CC BY 4.0 Acknowledgment: L. Shatz)
“Galaxies are made up of stars and their solar systems, dust, gas, and invisible dark matter,” the announcement said. “Therefore, galactic collisions can result in large changes in the gravitational forces acting on these components.”
“Over time, the structure of the two (or more) colliding galaxies will change completely, possibly resulting in the creation of a single, merged galaxy,” the announcement continued. “That could be the result of the collision depicted in this image.”
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According to a NASA/ESA announcement, the Andromeda galaxy is expected to collide with the Milky Way galaxy in about 4 billion years. (NASA/JPL/California Institute of Technology)
The high-definition Hubble image shows NGC 6040, an elliptical, distorted galaxy, colliding with LEDA 59642, a round spiral galaxy, according to a joint statement. Elliptical galaxy NGC 6041, the central member of the galaxy cluster in which Arp 122 resides, is also partially visible, shining brightly in the left corner of the image, but was not part of the merger.
“It will be interesting to see what Arp 122 will look like once this impact is complete…but that won't happen for a long time,” the NASA/ESA announcement said.
According to NASA and ESA, galactic mergers are incredibly slow events. For example, the Milky Way galaxy is about to collide with the Andromeda galaxy, but the collision won't happen for about 4 billion years.
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The Hubble Space Telescope is an international cooperative project between NASA and the European Space Agency. This telescope was launched into space in 1990 for him to get a glimpse of the vast universe. (NASA Goddard)
“Galaxy collisions and mergers are highly energetic and dramatic events, but they occur on very slow timescales,” the announcement said. “The process of collision and merging will not end soon either; it may take hundreds of millions of years to unfold.”
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According to the joint statement, galaxies formed by mergers have regular or elliptical structures because collisions destroy more complex structures.
