A new telescopic image shows two entangled galaxies that will eventually merge into one in millions of years. The collision provides a foretaste of the eventual, similar fate of our own Milky Way galaxy.
The Gemini North telescope, located on top of Maunakea in Hawaii, has observed the interacting spiral galaxies about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. The galactic pair NGC 4567 and NGC 4568, also known as the Butterfly Galaxies, have just started colliding as gravity pulls them together.
In 500 million years, the two cosmic systems will completely merge to form an elliptical galaxy. At this early stage, the two galaxy centers are still 20,000 light-years apart and each galaxy has retained its spiral shape. As the galaxies become more entangled, the gravitational forces will lead to multiple events of intense star formation. The original structures of the galaxies will change and distort.
Over time, they will dance around each other in circles that get smaller and smaller. This tight loop dance will attract and stretch long streams of gas and stars, mixing the two galaxies into something resembling a sphere.
The afterglow of a supernova, first observed in 2020, is also visible in the new image as a bright spot in one of the spiral arms of galaxy NGC 4568.
Fusion in the Milky Way
A similar galactic merger will occur when our Milky Way Galaxy finally collides with the Andromeda Galaxy, our largest and closest galactic neighbor. NASA astronomers used Hubble data in 2012 to predict when a head-on collision between the two spiral galaxies could occur. It is estimated that this will happen in about 4 to 5 billion years.
Right now, a huge halo, a large envelope of gas, that surrounds the Andromeda Galaxy is already colliding with the galaxy’s halo, according to research based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope published in 2020.
This neighbor, which probably contains 1 trillion stars, is similar in size to our large galaxy, and it is only 2.5 million light-years away. That may sound incredibly far away, but on an astronomical scale, Andromeda is so close that the galaxy is visible in our autumn sky. You can see it as a faint cigar-shaped point of light, high in the sky.
NASA scientists said our solar system is unlikely to be destroyed when the Milky Way and Andromeda merge, but the sun could be kicked into a new part of the galaxy and Earth’s night sky could well be some new ones. get spectacular views.
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