JAKARTA – The European Space Agency (ESA) has shared the latest photos from the Hubble Space Telescope. This telescope managed to capture an image of two galaxies about to collide and become one.
The portrait of this galaxy is known as Arp 122, a combination of the galaxies NGC 6040 and LEDA 59642. Before uniting, NGC 6040 was in the shape of a slanted and curved spiral, while LEDA 59642 was in the shape of a round spiral facing each other.
ESA says that the meeting of these two galaxies is at a very safe distance, namely around 570 million light years from Earth. The merger of these two galaxies also occurs very slowly and will take another four billion years.
“The process of collision and merger will not take place in a short time, it will take hundreds of millions of years for it to happen. “This collision took a long time because the distance covered was very long,” said ESA in an official statement.
Meanwhile, ESA cannot yet confirm the cause of this collision process. Most likely, the components that make up the galaxy experience changes in the gravitational force at work. Therefore, galaxies move and collide with each other until their structure is disrupted.
Each galaxy does have a different structure, but this structure will unite because of this merger. Astronomers have not yet guessed the final structure of Arp 122, but it will probably be regular or elliptical.
“The resulting galaxy is thought to have a regular or elliptical structure because the merger process disrupts a more complex structure. “It will be very interesting to know what Arp 122 will look like after this collision is over,” concluded ESA.
Tag: one galaxy outer space solar system
2024-01-08 19:05:00
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