Four massive galaxies are colliding in the largest galactic merger ever seen. This merger will possibility reveal how the larger galaxies in the universe are created and why many of them stopped producing stars billions of years ago. (Click on the image to expand)
Kenneth Rines of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge found this largest major merger ever recorded. The four galaxies are known as CL0958+4702 which are at a staggering distance of about 5 billion light years from Earth. Three of the merging galaxies are the size of the Milky Way, while the other is about three times as large.
Also discovered is fan-shaped ‘plume’ of old, red stars trailing about 360,000 light years from the merger. Scientists believe that these were thrown out of the merging galaxies as they spiraled towards each other. The gravitational pull of these merging galaxies will eventually pull back about half of those stars back into the merging galaxies. The rest will remain on the outskirts of the galaxy. This could suggest that free-floating stars found within other galaxy clusters were also ejected from their birth galaxies.
The completion of the merger is estimated to happen in about 100 million years.
The second place prize goes to the Antenna Galaxies. The two galaxies that merged to form this one were about the size of our Milky Way galaxy. (Click on the image to expand)
Recent Comments