Posted on 09/25/2013 12:54:13 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: Here in the Milky Way galaxy we have astronomical front row seats as M81 and M82 face-off, a mere 12 million light-years away. Locked in a gravitational struggle for the past billion years or so, the two bright galaxies are captured in this deep telescopic snapshot, constructed from 25 hours of image data. Their most recent close encounter likely resulted in the enhanced spiral arms of M81 (left) and violent star forming regions in M82 so energetic the galaxy glows in X-rays. After repeated passes, in a few billion years only one galaxy will remain. From our perspective, this cosmic moment is seen through a foreground veil of the Milky Way's stars and clouds of dust. Faintly reflecting the foreground starlight, the pervasive dust clouds are relatively unexplored galactic cirrus, or integrated flux nebulae, only a few hundred light-years above the plane of the Milky Way.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit & Copyright: Ivan Eder]
Prayers going up for all the poor people in those galaxies that are going to collide.
Thanks for the ping
The same thing’s going to happen here when Andromeda arrives.
If they only reduced their carbon footprint, this never would have happened!
The impact on any single star system will be minimal, just the celestial scenery will change. The stars are separated by the same kind of distances as in our own galaxy.
It was a joke.
Gore’bon, the Magnificent, had been warning them for the last 500 million years...
Sometimes, it’s hard to tell.
Understood. I just can’t do the whole smiley thing.
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