SPACE — The Andromeda Galaxy, the largest spiral galaxy, is hurtling towards our galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy. According to scientists’ estimates, the Andromeda galaxy and the Milky Way will begin to merge in the next few billion years.
The process will likely look like new images taken by the Gemini South Observatory. The image is captioned NGC 7727, a strange galaxy in the constellation Aquarius, about 90 million light years away.
Reporting from Universe Todaythe image shows two giant spiral galaxies merging, their gravitational interactions throwing giant stars into the cosmos.
Astronomers believe the collision that created NGC 7727 began more than a billion years ago. Within this chaos and disorder are a pair of black holes, one from each of the original galaxies.
These two black holes hold two records. The first record is the closest pair of supermassive black holes to Earth and the second record is the closest pair of black holes ever seen.
One of the black holes measures 154 million solar masses. The other black hole is another 6.3 million solar masses. The distance between the two is about 1,600 light years.
Astronomers estimate that the two black holes will eventually merge into one in about 250 million years. This will form a more massive black hole.
The collision will emit powerful gravitational waves across space-time that it is hoped will one day be tracked by a future version of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) observatory.
Even though the merger started a long time ago, the galaxy is still affected by it. In fact, about 23 objects discovered in this system are considered young globular cluster candidates.
Astronomers say these clusters of stars often form in regions where star formation is higher than normal and are particularly common in the interacting galaxies in the photo.
Because the Milky Way and its nearest neighbor the Andromeda galaxy (M31) are pulled together in a gravitational dance, it is likely that an event similar to that seen in NGC 7727 will occur. Some astronomers say it is likely that the Sun will be flung into another region of our galaxy.
Gemini South is one half of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab located in Hawai’i.
2023-10-27 02:17:00
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