NGC 6240: Merging Galaxies
From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day
NGC 6240 offers a rare,
nearby glimpse of a cosmic catastrophe in its final throes.
The titanic galaxy-galaxy collision takes place a
mere 400 million light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus.
The merging galaxies
spew distorted tidal tails of stars, gas, and dust and undergo fast and furious bursts of star
formation.
The two supermassive
black holes in the original galactic cores will also coalesce into a single,
even more massive black hole and soon,
only one large galaxy will remain.
This dramatic image of
the scene is a composite of narrowband and near-infrared to visible broadband
data from Hubble's ACS and WPC3 cameras, a view that spans over 300,000
light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 6240.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage (STScI / AURA), A. Evans (U. Virginia / NRAO / Stony Brook U.)
