Astronomy Picture of the Day
Posted By admin On April 29, 2011 @ 6:46 am In Photo Essays | Comments Disabled
Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly constellation Corvus, two large galaxies collided.
[1]
The Antennae
Image Credit & Copyright [2]: Acquisition and data reduction – Andrey Oreshko (Elena Remote Observatory),
Processing – Dietmar Hager (stargazer-observatory [3])
Explanation: Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly constellation Corvus [4], two large galaxies collided [5]. But the stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 [6], don’t collide in the course of the ponderous event [7], lasting hundreds of millions of years. Instead, their large clouds of molecular gas [8] and dust do, triggering furious episodes of star formation near the center of the cosmic wreckage [9]. Spanning about 500 thousand light-years, this stunning view [10] also reveals new star clusters and matter flung far [11] from the scene of the accident by gravitational tidal [12] forces. Of course [13], the suggestive visual appearance of the extended arcing structures gives the galaxy pair its popular name – The Antennae.
Visit the NASA/JPL website to view more Astronomy Pictures of the Day [14]
Article printed from Recorder Online: http://www.berthoudrecorder.com
URL to article: http://www.berthoudrecorder.com/2011/04/29/astronomy-picture-of-the-day-65/
URLs in this post:
[1] Image: http://www.berthoudrecorder.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/ngc4038HagarOreshko.jpg
[2] Copyright: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_apod.html#srapply
[3] stargazer-observatory: http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/
[4] constellation Corvus: http://hawastsoc.org/deepsky/crv/index.html
[5] collided: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1997/34/
[6] NGC 4038 and NGC 4039: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~jhibbard/n4038/
[7] ponderous event: http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~dubinski/antennae/antennae.html
[8] molecular gas: http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/Bima/GMC.html
[9] cosmic wreckage: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061024.html
[10] this stunning view: http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/ngc4038.html
[11] matter flung far: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090426.html
[12] gravitational tidal: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0307383
[13] Of course: http://burro.cwru.edu/JavaLab/GalCrashWeb/
[14] Astronomy Pictures of the Day: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/
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