Galaxy Collisions

[Venetia]

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24282959/?GT1=43001

I thought this was pretty sweet ass so I thought I'd share. BTW, the Hubble is 18 now so if you wanna go park your baloney pony in her sweet sweet telescopic rotary port, it's now legal :x

New Hubble photos show galaxy collisions
Slew of new images released in time for the space telescope's 18th birthday

Spoiler: The Story

A huge set of new Hubble Space Images show galactic collisions in action and the variety of peculiar forms that merging galaxies can take.

The series of 59 new photographs, released today on the 18th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's launch, are the largest collection of Hubble images ever released together.

Galaxy mergers are now known to be more common than was previously thought. They were even more common in the early universe than they are today. The early universe was smaller, so galaxies were closer together and therefore more prone to smash-ups. Even apparently isolated galaxies can show signs of past mergers in their internal structure.

Our own Milky Way contains the debris of the many smaller galaxies it has brushed against and devoured in the past. And it hasn't stopped munching away at its neighbors: It is currently absorbing the Sagittarius dwarf elliptical galaxy.

The Milky Way isn't the top predator though, as our giant neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, is expected to devour the Milky Way in about two billion years. The future resulting elliptical galaxy has already been dubbed "Milkomeda."

Though colliding galaxies rush towards each other at hundreds of kilometers per hour, the interactions can take hundreds of millions of years to complete.

This game of celestial bumper cars is driven by the gravitational pulls that galaxies exert on one another. Typically the first sign of a collision is a bridge of matter connecting two galaxies as gravity's first gentle tugs tease out dust and gas. As the outer reaches of the galaxies begin to interact, long streamers of gas and dust, called tidal tails, sweep back to wrap around the galactic cores.

As the cores approach each other, the conflicting pull of matter from all directions can result in shockwaves that ripple through interstellar clouds. Gas and dust are siphoned off to fuel bursts of star formation that appear as blue knots of young stars. Given the vast distances between stars in a galaxy ­— the nearest star to us is 4.3 light-years away — stars rarely collide when galaxies merge.

The Hubble images capture galaxies in various stages of the collision process and show the variety of new and unusual shapes the mergers can create, including mergers that look like an owl in flight and a toothbrush.

Here are some of the photos -- scroll down on that MSNBC link above to see a slideshow of the photos. (Or, click here.) It's really crazy what kind of colors and shapes are made.

Spoiler: Photos

http://blog.wired.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/10/30/dancing_galaxies.jpg[/img]
http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2003/arp299/arp2 ... t.crop.jpg[/img]
http://regmedia.co.uk/2006/10/17/antenna_galaxies.jpg[/img]
http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/news/archive/ ... ubble1.jpg[/img]

Next time someone wants to talk about heavenly bodies coming together, you'll have something halfway intelligent to discuss afterwards.

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

holy fucking awesome i love this crap

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

and speaking of heavenly bodies coming together, when are we goin to hang out again?

 

[Venetia]

Dun double post, you voracious flirt you :3

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

Don't avoid the question

 

[candle]

That last picture is what it's supposed to look like when the Milky Way and Andromeda collide.

 

[Venetia]

No, I thought it was a hubble pic. That's what it's indexed as.

 

[candle]

I didn't say it wasn't.  All I meant is that is what it is supposed to look like when our galaxy and Andromeda merge.  Though it will probably be a lot more chaotic. (two of the largest known galaxies and the largest in our cluster, and all)

 

[Stardust]

It's certainly interesting.  As long as the stars don't clash, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.  I imagine that a star crash would result in devastating waves of energy, but hopefully we won't have to worry about that.

 

[boon]

Yeah, the Andromeda Galaxy - isn't that the one with the black hole in the center?

The so-called "Cannibal" Galaxies. We might have a black hole in the center of the Milky Way.

 

[candle]

ALL galaxies have a massive black hole at the center.  It's what makes up the "core"

 

[boon]

Not all, some has a massive cluster of stars. Dwarf Galaxies certainly don't.

 

[candle]

let me correct that:

ALL larger galaxies have a massive black hole at the center.  It's what makes up the "core"

Smaller galaxies may have a large cluster of stars instead.  It doesn't really matter as long as the singularity is strong enough to pull in whole star system from millions of light years away

 

[shiroun]

wait, galaxies have black holes at the centre? I'm scared.

 

[candle]

what do you think pulls all those stars together?

 

[Untra]

I figure that the black hole is essentially a way of saying the heaviest body. In our solar system, I believe that's the sun. Black holes are essentially so heavy that we are incapable of actually, err, seeing them. Either way though, black holes and the sun have one similar quality: if any object smaller then them gets close enough to them, it will be pulled towards them at a rapid speed.

Isnt gravity fucking awesome?

 

[Harvest]

I figure that the black hole is essentially a way of saying the heaviest body. In our solar system, I believe that's the sun.

No, completely wrong and no.

 

[Stardust]

I figure that the black hole is essentially a way of saying the heaviest body.

A black hole is caused by the compression of a dead star on staggeringly high levels.  The dead star crushes anything near it and has an increased gravitational pull.  There are a lot of theories about what happens if one would be able to enter through a black hole, but we are far from finding it out.  The Sun is not a black hole.  It is currently a star and can become a number of things after its death, but I doubt our star is big enough to become a black hole.

 

[skirtboy]

I believe that he was trying to explain why a galaxy requires a black hole or similar for cohesion in a way that anyone could follow.

 

[Untra]

Oh no! I was trying to to imply that thats what I thought Darkfire meant when saying all galaxies have a black hole in the center I figured maybe by black hole he was refering to the heaviest body, or the one with the most gravitational pull. Damn me and my stupid non proof reading.