A SMASHING VIEW FROM HUBBLE
Written on 11:20 AM by Admin
Long ago, a galaxy far away smashed into another galaxy - creating a beautiful, terrible knot of cosmic chaos. The view of that galactic collision, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, serves as a preview of what might well happen when the Andromeda Galaxy slams into our Milky Way galaxy billions of years from now.
The picture from Hubble, released today, shows the mighty crash of two galaxies similar to the Milky Way, but 250 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer. The weird-looking, two-tailed result is known as NGC 2623 or Arp 243.
Scientists say NGC 2623 appears to be in the late stages of a galactic merger. The supermassive black holes at the center of the two original galaxies have combined to form a super-energetic nucleus. The energy released by the clash has sparked the formation of large star clusters much brighter than the brightest clusters we see in our own celestial neighborhood.
The stars shine particularly brightly in the long tidal tails that were thrown off during the collision. Each of those tails is roughly 65,000 to 80,000 light-years long, which comes close to rivaling the width of the Milky Way's main disk.
Aaron Evans, an astronomer at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville who led the observational team, said NGC 2623's burst of starbirth has been going on for a long time. "If we assume the oldest star clusters that are extremely bright were formed at the beginning of the interaction, the age would be around 100 million years," he told me.
The star clusters, which show up as sparks of blue in the Hubble image, were likely shocked into existence as a result of the galactic collision. "The stars themselves don't actually touch, but what does happen is that the gas in the galaxies is affected gravitationally by the interaction," Evans explained.
The picture from Hubble, released today, shows the mighty crash of two galaxies similar to the Milky Way, but 250 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer. The weird-looking, two-tailed result is known as NGC 2623 or Arp 243.
Scientists say NGC 2623 appears to be in the late stages of a galactic merger. The supermassive black holes at the center of the two original galaxies have combined to form a super-energetic nucleus. The energy released by the clash has sparked the formation of large star clusters much brighter than the brightest clusters we see in our own celestial neighborhood.
The stars shine particularly brightly in the long tidal tails that were thrown off during the collision. Each of those tails is roughly 65,000 to 80,000 light-years long, which comes close to rivaling the width of the Milky Way's main disk.
Aaron Evans, an astronomer at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville who led the observational team, said NGC 2623's burst of starbirth has been going on for a long time. "If we assume the oldest star clusters that are extremely bright were formed at the beginning of the interaction, the age would be around 100 million years," he told me.
The star clusters, which show up as sparks of blue in the Hubble image, were likely shocked into existence as a result of the galactic collision. "The stars themselves don't actually touch, but what does happen is that the gas in the galaxies is affected gravitationally by the interaction," Evans explained.
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