Hugging galaxies
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The Hubble Space Telescope science team today released the photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, of the interaction of three galaxies, the larger two of which look like they are hugging each other.
This galaxy triplet is estimated to be about just under 700 million light years away. It was taken as part of a program aimed at producing high quality images of strange looking galaxies.
Using Hubble’s powerful Advanced Camera for Surveys, astronomers took a closer look at some of the more unusual galaxies that volunteers identified. The original Galaxy Zoo project was the largest galaxy census ever carried out and relied on crowdsourcing time from more than 100,000 volunteers to classify 900,000 unexamined galaxies. The project achieved what would have been years of work for a professional astronomer in only 175 days and has led to a steady stream of similar astronomical citizen science projects. Later Galaxy Zoo projects have included the largest ever studies of galaxy mergers and tidal dwarf galaxies, as well as the discovery of entirely new types of compact star-forming galaxies.
If you want to do some real science, you should definitely check out the Galaxy Zoo webpage. Anyone can join in, using images produced by the Victor Blanco 156 inch (4 meter) telescope in Chile to find cool stuff that needs closer examination using better telescopes like Hubble.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The Hubble Space Telescope science team today released the photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, of the interaction of three galaxies, the larger two of which look like they are hugging each other.
This galaxy triplet is estimated to be about just under 700 million light years away. It was taken as part of a program aimed at producing high quality images of strange looking galaxies.
Using Hubble’s powerful Advanced Camera for Surveys, astronomers took a closer look at some of the more unusual galaxies that volunteers identified. The original Galaxy Zoo project was the largest galaxy census ever carried out and relied on crowdsourcing time from more than 100,000 volunteers to classify 900,000 unexamined galaxies. The project achieved what would have been years of work for a professional astronomer in only 175 days and has led to a steady stream of similar astronomical citizen science projects. Later Galaxy Zoo projects have included the largest ever studies of galaxy mergers and tidal dwarf galaxies, as well as the discovery of entirely new types of compact star-forming galaxies.
If you want to do some real science, you should definitely check out the Galaxy Zoo webpage. Anyone can join in, using images produced by the Victor Blanco 156 inch (4 meter) telescope in Chile to find cool stuff that needs closer examination using better telescopes like Hubble.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“This galaxy triplet is estimated to be about just under 700 million light years away. ”
Just under … 700 million light years away.
I was worried there for a moment, even checked my “go bag” to be certain I loaded a tooth brush.
On the serious note, truly amazing and beautiful.
Galaxy Collisions: Simulation vs Observations
Hubble Space Telescope 2014
https://youtu.be/C0XNyTp5brM
1:35
Wayne,
The YouTube description says, in part: “This structure is stable when left alone, but is relatively easily disturbed when another galaxy passes near.”
Since it is stable in the model, they must have figured out how to include dark matter in the model.
Looks like one is spanking the other over the knee.
Ha ha, good one Edward.
Oh there’s the dark matter, see the trailing edges of stars as they’re flung into deep space? That’s the dark matter, still traveling in the same direction having too much mass to slow down to collide…
Is this what happens when dark matter collides? Nothing? Because we can’t see it?
I was hoping that the addition of three galaxies colliding times that of the dark matter would cause such a severe increase in gravity that the entire area would be red shifted due to time and space dilation…. Oh well, time to rework the theory.
I know! (I have a guess), maybe dark matter is diamagnetic? That photons, with the negative charge, are accelerated into the blue spectrum?
That means that the red galaxies don’t have dark matter and that’s why they’re irregular… Not enough gravity holding them together!
See? I can pretend to be an astrophysicist too!
IF the Hubble can see that far and that detailed why don’t they aim it at the space junk about to hit the moon??
BLSinSC: Hubble can’t focus on such objects that close. The closest objects it can generally observe are objects from from Mars outward.