Image from the Hubble Space Telescope of galaxy mergers (Digital Trends)
Monday 20 February 2023 / 15:40
This week’s image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the dramatic collision of three different galaxies. The trio, located in the Boötes constellation, is in the process of merging and will eventually form one large galaxy.
“This colliding trio — known to astronomers as SDSSCGB 10189 — is a relatively rare combination of three large star-forming galaxies located only 50,000 light-years apart. While this may seem like a safe distance, this makes the galaxies “So close to its neighbors. Our galactic neighbors are much further away. Andromeda, the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way, is more than 2.5 million light-years from Earth.”
Galaxy collisions – when two or more galaxies meet each other – are not rare, and the results of these massive collisions vary, either with the merger of galaxies to form a new larger galaxy, as is the case here, or the annihilation of another galaxy.
Although stars from each galaxy are unlikely to collide, due to the amount of distance between each star, the cores of most galaxies contain a supermassive black hole, and the merger of these massive monsters can unleash gravitational waves and launch stars into the air.
Normally, if a larger galaxy collides with a smaller satellite galaxy, the larger galaxy will strip stars and material from the smaller galaxy and maintain most of its shape. In other cases, the massive gravitational forces involved in the collision can pull one or both galaxies into bizarre shapes.
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, will collide with the nearby Andromeda Galaxy in about 4 billion years. This collision may also include another nearby galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy, which could be pulled into orbit around the merger as well before finally colliding as well, according to Digital Trends.