Merging galaxies tagged posts

This image shows three instances of merging galaxies located at least a billion light years from Earth. Each galaxy is as large as the Milky Way and contains about 100 billion stars. Violent gravitational interactions created the tidal tails shown and triggered massive black hole accretion at the galactic nuclei. These systems were first confirmed by Hai Fu in 2015. Credit: Hai Fu, University of Iowa

Astrophysicist wins grant to find and characterize super massive black holes associated with merging galaxies. In roughly 4 billion years, the Milky Way will be no more. Indeed, our home galaxy is on course to collide and unite with the Andromeda Galaxy, at present some 2 million light years away...

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

It is known today that merging galaxies play a large role in the evolution of galaxies and the formation of elliptical galaxies in particular. However there are only a few merging systems close enough to be observed in depth. The pair of interacting galaxies seen here—known as NGC 3921 — is one of these systems.

NGC 3921—found in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear)—is an interacting pair of disk galaxies in the late stages of its merger. Observations show that both of the galaxies involved were about the same mass and collided about 700 million years ago. You can see clearly in this image the disturbed morphology, tails and loops characteristic of a post-merger.
The clash of galaxies caused a rush of star formati...