Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
shows the unusual galaxy IRAS 06076-2139, found in the constellation
Lepus (The Hare). Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instruments observed the galaxy from a distance of 500 million light-years.
This
particular object stands out from the crowd by actually being composed
of two separate galaxies rushing past each other at about 2 million
kilometres per hour. This speed is most likely too fast for them to merge
and form a single galaxy. However, because of their small separation of
only about 20 000 light-years, the galaxies will distort one another
through the force of gravity while passing each other, changing their
structures on a grand scale.
Such galactic interactions are a common sight
for Hubble, and have long been a field of study for astronomers. The
intriguing behaviours of interacting galaxies take many forms; galactic
cannibalism, galaxy harassment and even galaxy collisions. The Milky Way
itself will eventually fall victim to the latter, merging with the
Andromeda Galaxy in about 4.5 billion years. The fate of our galaxy
shouldn’t be alarming though: whilst galaxies are populated by billions
of stars, the distances between individual stars are so large that
hardly any stellar collisions will occur.
