Galactically Linked “L”

NASA, J. Eng­lish (U. Man­i­toba), S. Huns­berger, S. Zonak, J. Charl­ton, S. Gal­lagher (PSU), and L. Frattare (STScI)

Dis­torted galax­ies form the let­ter “L” in this image of Seyfert’s Sex­tet. Six objects appear in this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope but only four galax­ies are inter­act­ing. The face-on spi­ral in the cen­ter of the image is a back­ground galaxy five times far­ther away than the others.

Explore the image. This group of galax­ies occu­pies a space just 100,000 light-years across; smaller than the Milky Way Galaxy. The dis­torted shapes of the galax­ies tell a tale of close inter­ac­tions and merg­ers. The spi­ral galaxy at the top appears almost untouched, with just a small warp the spi­ral arms. Travel across the dark band along the galac­tic plane of the cen­ter galaxy. The splash of stars in the lower right is a long, tidal tail of stars torn from one of the galax­ies dur­ing the inter­ac­tions. This warped tail is 35,000 light-years long. Halos of stars and stream­ers of dust link the galax­ies as they con­tinue to move closer to form­ing a larger galaxy, pos­si­bly an ellip­ti­cal galaxy, far in the future. Many back­ground galax­ies can be seen in the image as well.

One thing we don’t see in this image are halos of blue stars, the tell-tale sign of new star for­ma­tion. In many other galaxy inter­ac­tions, clus­ters of new hot stars are seen through­out the galax­ies. Astronomer’s may be see­ing Seyfert’s Sex­tet at the begin­ning of its interactions.

Astronomers named the sex­tet for Carl Seyfert who dis­cov­ered the group­ing in the late 1940s. Seyfert’s Sex­tet is found about 190 mil­lion light years away from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Ser­pens, the Ser­pent. Light left this galac­tic merger dur­ing the Juras­sic Period on Earth when the most pop­u­lar dinosaurs, such as Allosaurus, Bra­chiosaurus and Ste­gasaurus roamed in large conifer forests.