Hats off to the Hubble Space Telescope again for capturing yet another phenomenal image from our universe: The collision of two galaxies.
What you see in that image, released by NASA on Oct. 13, is the end result of the collision of two galaxies the size of our own Milky Way, which has created a new astrological body called, in the romantic lingo of science, NGC 2623.
Or Arp 243. For short, we guess.
Despite the fact these two galaxies impacted one another at what a NASA/European Space Agency article calls “breakneck speeds,” because of the interstellar distances involved this still was a very, very, very slow motion event to us. For one thing, it happened a long time ago, since it is 250 million light years away in the constellation Cancer.
So, what exactly is Hubble showing us? Some pretty mind-blowing stuff. The two galactic centers have now merged into one nucleus, according to NASA/ESA, bringing unimaginable energies to bear upon one another. Those energies created tidal forces that formed the two tails you can see streaming away from that nucleus — tails composed of huge clouds of gas, nebula, and clusters of young stars created by the violence of the collision. In the lower arm alone, more than 100 star clusters have been identified.
Furthermore, deep within the nucleus the supermassive black holes that inhabit galactic centers are now sucking in matter and forming what scientists call an accretion disc. That releases torrents of energy, which in turn heats up the disc and makes it radiate lots of electromagnetic energy, which can be measured by astronomers.
It is, if you really stop to think about it, a phenomenally humbling concept. During this collision stars older and bigger than our Sun have doubtless been destroyed, entire planetary systems torn apart, new stars and worlds created — all so far away that humanity will likely never reach it no matter how long we last, but visible to us if we look at the night sky with a powerful enough lens.