Astronomy Picture of the Day -- NGC 6240: Merging Galaxies

NASA ^ | May 21, 2015 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: NGC 6240 offers a rare, nearby glimpse of a cosmic catastrophe in its final throes. The titanic galaxy-galaxy collision takes place a mere 400 million light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. The merging galaxies spew distorted tidal tails of stars, gas, and dust and undergo fast and furious bursts of star formation. The two supermassive black holes in the original galactic cores will also coalesce into a single, even more massive black hole and soon, only one large galaxy will remain. This dramatic image of the scene is a composite of narrowband and near-infrared to visible broadband data from Hubble's ACS and WPC3 cameras, a view that spans over 300,000 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 6240.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage (STScI / AURA), A. Evans (U. Virginia / NRAO / Stony Brook U.)]

[SunkenCiv]

The Big One

join or quit list APoD 'blog post new APoD topic Astronomy Picture of the Day topic & keyword Astronomy Chat, Bloggers & keyword Science Chat, Bloggers & keyword NASA's APoD archive Calendar 1995-present APoD on your desktop

[left that other site]

Kind of like Office Depot and Staples.

[Verginius Rufus]

Wow. To put that into perspective: A “mere 400 million light-years” means that light has been traveling towards earth since before the earliest dinosaurs were alive. 300,000 million light-years: that’s longer than the administration has been stonewalling about Benghazi.

[henkster]

To put it in even greater perspective; in these photos of galaxies "a mere 400 million light years away," I usually zoom in on the photo, and look at the area around the featured galaxy. What do I see? Literally dozens of other galaxies, all far more distant than the one depicted. The light from them must have been generated one or two billion years ago, before any life existed on earth.

I just shake my head at the incomprehensible vastness of God's Creation. Then I go to have a sandwich for lunch.

[TheOldLady]

It looks a bit like A Tu’un, or perhaps a Phoenix.

Who knows what the coalesced single galaxy looks like now
with its massive two black holes combined into one in the
center?

Thank you for the spectacular picture, post, and ping,
Mr. Civilizations.

[SunkenCiv]

My pleasure. The APoD has been on a roll lately.