One spiral galaxy eating another
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of an on-going survey of known pecular-looking galaxies. This pair is believed to be 570 million light years away. From the caption:
Galaxies are composed of stars and their solar systems, dust and gas. In galactic collisions, therefore, these constituent components may experience enormous changes in the gravitational forces acting on them. In time, this completely changes the structure of the two (or more) colliding galaxies, and sometimes ultimately results in a single, merged galaxy. That may well be what results from the collision pictured in this image. Galaxies that result from mergers are thought to have a regular or elliptical structure, as the merging process disrupts more complex structures (such as those observed in spiral galaxies). It would be fascinating to know what Arp 122 will look like once this collision is complete . . . but that will not happen for a long, long time.
From our viewpoint, the spiral galaxy at the top appears warped by the gravitational pull of the face-on spiral at the bottom, as if it is being sucked into the bottom galaxy. In truth, both galaxies are pulling on each other. If we could circle around and see them in three dimensions we would almost certainly see distortions in the bottom spiral as well.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
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P.O.Box 1262
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of an on-going survey of known pecular-looking galaxies. This pair is believed to be 570 million light years away. From the caption:
Galaxies are composed of stars and their solar systems, dust and gas. In galactic collisions, therefore, these constituent components may experience enormous changes in the gravitational forces acting on them. In time, this completely changes the structure of the two (or more) colliding galaxies, and sometimes ultimately results in a single, merged galaxy. That may well be what results from the collision pictured in this image. Galaxies that result from mergers are thought to have a regular or elliptical structure, as the merging process disrupts more complex structures (such as those observed in spiral galaxies). It would be fascinating to know what Arp 122 will look like once this collision is complete . . . but that will not happen for a long, long time.
From our viewpoint, the spiral galaxy at the top appears warped by the gravitational pull of the face-on spiral at the bottom, as if it is being sucked into the bottom galaxy. In truth, both galaxies are pulling on each other. If we could circle around and see them in three dimensions we would almost certainly see distortions in the bottom spiral as well.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
They’re not colliding, they’re hugging! https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2024/01/the-thrill-of-word-policing.html
Shouldn’t the universal expansion have kept them from running into each other?
If they were formed close to each other they would not have had time to form spirals. They would have merged long before then.
All formed galaxies should be moving away from each other right?
pzatchok-
pretty much all formed (or not) galaxies are moving away from each other, except for those that are gravitationally bound to each other.
“… except for those that are gravitationally bound to each other.”
That’s the rub. Large, extensive galaxy clusters aren’t gravitationally bound together, but smaller clusters – such as, e.g., our Local Group of galaxies, which includes our Milky Way as well as Andromeda (M31) and more than 80 other galaxies (mostly dwarf) – can be and are bound together gravitationally.
Robert – My humble typo help: “One spiral galaxy ***eatng*** another” – eatng = eating?
Thanks for all your great work.
Doubting Thomas: I had to look three times before I saw the problem. Now fixed. Thank you.
Pink Floyd – Dark Side Of The Moon
“Speak To Me / Breath”
https://youtu.be/DLOth-BuCNY
(7:26)
[The whole thing is good but jump to 4:40 for some cool galaxy-collision animation.]
Wayne, perfect audio choice. The 60’s and 70’s certainly were the decades of American reflection and realization. What will 2024 be? The year of subjugation and authoritarian control?
Or political realization and revolution within the mass of the people of America?
Stand by.
“Truth is not the job of government; control of power and governance is the job of the entity “Government” (SEE: S.O.M.). Your, my, our juvenile paternal need to see government as the teller of truth and having our best interests in mind is a false reality Pedestrian Realm perspective. And fear related to that perspective is a tool of manipulation in pursuit of power and control.”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/about-climate-change
Why the small clusters and not the large clusters?
Gravity should be just as strong between the large as the small.
The small combine into large.
Technically, the galaxies aren’t so much ‘moving away from each other’ as much as ‘space is being created between them.’ How much space is created is more-or-less constant, as near as we can tell, so the distance created over a given time span is a linear relation to the distance between the objects. Meanwhile, the gravity effect decreases by the square of the distance.
Anyway, point is universal expansion is a bigger deal the further away two objects are, while gravity becomes lesser, so once you get far enough away the space between gets bigger faster than gravity can pull them together. Eventually, they end up so far away that space in between expands faster than light can travel and you can’t see it any longer.
Unless, of course, they’re close enough that gravity wins the tug-of-war and they eventually ‘hug.’
It’s also worth pointing out that small and large galactic clusters aren’t bigger and smaller versions at more-or-less the same scale; a large cluster is a collection of small clusters, magnitudes bigger in scale.