Galaxy Blasting

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

Like the Mil­le­nium Fal­con blast­ing out of an explod­ing sec­ond Death Star, Arp 148 shows the stun­ning results of a galaxy smashup. The col­li­sion, shown in this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, pro­duced a ring-shaped galaxy and a long-tailed com­pan­ion. Astronomers believe that this is a unique view of a col­li­sion in progress. Shock­waves from the col­li­sion first drew mate­r­ial into the cen­ter and then caused it to fly out in a ring of new star formation.

Arp 148 is nick­named “Mayall’s Object,” after astronomer Nicholas U. May­all of the Lick Obser­a­va­tory. He first described the galaxy as a pecu­liar neb­ula shaped like a ques­tion mark. Arp 148 is located about 500 mil­lion light-years away toward the con­stel­la­tion of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, or the Big Dipper.