William Atkins
Wednesday, 14 October 2009 18:59
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 2
The Hubble Space Telescope has just revealed a gigantic collision of two spiral galaxies about 250 million light-years away from our own Milky Way galaxy. Check out the images of the resulting "bright and bizarre" galaxy that astronomers are calling NGC 2623.
Both galaxies, together also called Arp 243, were similar to our own Milky Way galaxy, until they began to collide and twisted themselves into one galaxy.
The collision of these two galaxies, each composed of billions of stars and located within the constellation Cancer (the Crab), will probably not result in any actual collisions—since each star within the galaxies are separated by very large distances.
Check out the image of NGC 2623 on the October 13, 2009
National Geographic website “
SPACE PHOTOS THIS WEEK: Moon Crash, Galaxy Merger, More.”
In addition, the October 13, 2009
Scientific American article “
Twisted beauty when whirls collide” states,
“… with their merger almost complete, long tidal tails of young stars formed in the mix of gas and dust stretch out to reveal the collision has taken place. Around 100 bright star clusters have been found in the prominent lower tail alone."
You’ll also get a chance to see four other images on the
National Geographic website, (1) the Noctis Labyrinthus region on
Mars taken by the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter; (2) the newly formed impact zone inside Cabeus crater on the
Moon taken by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter; (3) the galaxy NGC 6240, taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble, which includes two supermassive black holes that are slowly merging together to form an even larger supermassive black hole; and (4) the Pacific Northwest region in the United States (
Earth) taken by the Terra satellite during the recent storms.
All pictures are compliments of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Page two concludes.
