Intergalactic Rodeo

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

A starry sea­horse with a large curl­ing tail low­ers its head for a col­li­sion in this image of IC 4687 from the NASA/ESA Hub­ble Space Tele­scope.

Explore the thick bands of dust and starry tails of these merg­ing galax­ies. What sto­ries and pic­tures do you see in the image? Leave a note below.

Three galax­ies are involved in this galactic-scale col­li­sion. IC 4687, at the left, has a chaotic disk of stars. Its spi­ral arms are dusty and deformed. Fol­low the faint and long tidal tail swing­ing out to the left. IC 4686, in the cen­ter, has a bright nucleus and forms the head of the sea­horse in the image. IC 4689 with a dis­tinct hook and jum­bled nucleus, lies far­ther to the right. Mil­lions of years from now, these galax­ies will join to form a sin­gle large galaxy. For now, the col­li­sion of huge clouds of gas and the push and pull of grav­ity squishes gas and dust together. Some of this star mate­r­ial will pack tightly enough together to form new stars. Look for the hazy blue regions in the galax­ies. This glow­ing haze is actu­ally made up of mil­lions of young and hot blue stars.

Also look for the dozens of dis­tant galax­ies in this deep image of the universe.

These inter­act­ing galax­ies are found about 250 mil­lion light-years from Earth toward the south­ern con­stel­la­tion of Pavo, the Pea­cock.