Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Galaxies in the River

NASA ^ | February 10, 2016 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy practices galactic cannibalism, absorbing small galaxies that get too close and are captured by the Milky Way's gravity. In fact, the practice is common in the universe and illustrated by this striking pair of interacting galaxies from the banks of the southern constellation Eridanus, The River. Located over 50 million light years away, the large, distorted spiral NGC 1532 is seen locked in a gravitational struggle with dwarf galaxy NGC 1531 (right of center), a struggle the smaller galaxy will eventually lose. Seen edge-on, spiral NGC 1532 spans about 100,000 light-years. Nicely detailed in this sharp image, the NGC 1532/1531 pair is thought to be similar to the well-studied system of face-on spiral and small companion known as M51.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit and Copyright: CEDIC Team; Processing: Markus Blauensteiner]

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=3395126%2C0

http://129.164.179.22/apod/image/1602/N1532_LRGB_50_finishCedic1024.jpg

http://129.164.179.22/apod/image/1602/N1532_LRGB_50_finishCedic.jpg

[Caipirabob]

Good morning - cheers!

[Larry Lucido]

Pretty cool!

[ETL]

[SunkenCiv]

The Big One

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[Red Badger]

I gotta Queen of Spades in The River................

[Conan the Librarian]

Something to add to the list!

[Conan the Librarian]

I was looking just down(up?) the river from this on Friday night.

I was looking at NGC 1365. Take a look at that one one night.
It’s part of a group, and, it’s hard to keep track of all those galaxies there.

[ETL]

Thanks, but all I have now is a pair of tripod-mounted giant binocs.

However, galaxies are of course amazing things. To think that, even at light speed (186,000 miles per second), it would still take over 100 years to go from one end of our Milky Way galaxy to the other, one of 100 or so billion other galaxies.

[Conan the Librarian]

Make that 100,000 to get from one side to the other.

2,000,000 to get to Andromeda.

But, look on the bright side. It’s only 75,000 or so to the Magellanic Clouds.

[ETL]

I knew that. I don’t know how or why I left off the ,000.