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Credit & Copyright: Jose Jimenez Priego
Explanation:
Will either of these galaxies survive?
In what might be dubbed as a semi-final round in a galactic elimination tournament,
the two spirals of
NGC 7318 are colliding.
The
featured picture was created from images taken by the
Hubble Space Telescope.
When galaxies crash into each other, many things may happen including gravitational
distortion, gas condensing to produce
new episodes of star formation, and ultimately the
two galaxies combining into one.
Since these two galaxies are part of
Stephan's Quintet,
a final round of battling galaxies will likely
occur over the next few billion years with the
eventual result of many scattered stars and one large galaxy.
Quite possibly, the
remaining galaxy
will not be easily identified with any of its initial galactic components.
Stephan's Quintet was the
first identified galaxy group, lies about 300 million light years away, and is
visible through a moderately-sized telescope
toward
the constellation of the Winged Horse
(Pegasus).
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A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: Stephan's Quintet
Publications with words: Stephan's Quintet
See also: