Disturbed “V”

Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hub­ble Her­itage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Col­lab­o­ra­tion, and A. Evans (Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)

Galax­ies col­lide to form this highly dis­turbed “V” in this NASA Hub­ble Space Tele­scope image of inter­act­ing galaxy IC 883.

What other shapes do you see in the star clouds that make up this galaxy? Explore the com­plex cen­tral region. Two tidal tails shoot off at right angles to each other; the rem­nants of two gas-rich galax­ies. The gas and dust from the tails gets stretched and spun out dur­ing the merger. The col­li­sion seems to have trig­gered intense star for­ma­tion within the chaotic and stretched core. Look for the bright blue star clus­ters amid the dark Dur­ing galac­tic merg­ers, gas and dust get stretched and pulled. Some of this mate­r­ial clumps together and begins to smash together under grav­ity. If enough mate­r­ial comes together, a star can form. Zoom in on the dozens of ellip­ti­cal and spi­ral galax­ies in the dis­tant back­ground of IC 883.

IC 883, is located about 300 mil­lion light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Canes Venatici, the Hunt­ing Dogs of Bootes.