Picture: Hubble Records a Massive Galactic Merger

This image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases Arp 122, an unusual galaxy consisting of two galaxies, NGC 6040 and LEDA 59642, that are currently colliding. NGC 6040 is a tilted, warped spiral galaxy, while LEDA 59642 is a round, face-on spiral galaxy. This cosmic encounter is occurring at a safe distance of approximately 570 million light-years away from Earth. In the lower-left corner, we can see the elliptical galaxy NGC 6041, which is a member of the same galaxy cluster as Arp 122 but is not actively involved in this massive merger.Galactic collisions and mergers are incredibly energetic and dramatic events, but they unfold over an extended period of time. For instance, our Milky Way galaxy is projected to collide with its closest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), but this collision won’t occur for another 4 billion years. The process of colliding and merging itself is also a slow one, potentially taking hundreds of millions of years to fully unfold. These prolonged timescales are due to the immense distances between galaxies.

Galaxies consist of stars, solar systems, dust, gas, and dark matter, both visible and invisible. During galactic collisions, these constituent components undergo significant changes in the gravitational forces acting upon them. Over time, this leads to a complete transformation of the structure of the colliding galaxies, sometimes resulting in the formation of a single, merged galaxy.It is possible that the collision depicted in this image will eventually lead to the creation of a merged galaxy. Merged galaxies are believed to possess a regular or elliptical structure, as the merging process disrupts more intricate structures found in spiral galaxies. It would be truly captivating to witness the final appearance of Arp 122 once this collision concludes, but unfortunately, that will only occur in the distant future.

This article is republished from PhysORG under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.