Tinker Bell Goes to the Stars

Credit: ESO

Tin­ker Bell has man­aged to get her­self into the stars in this image from the Euro­pean South­ern Observatory.

Explore this triple merger of galax­ies named ‘The Bird’ by astronomers. What shapes or pat­terns do you see? Share in a note below.

An irreg­u­lar galaxy makes up the heart and body of this group­ing. Tidal tails of two mas­sive spi­ral galax­ies make up the wings. When galax­ies inter­act, grav­ity can dis­tort spi­ral arms. Some stars are pushed toward the cen­ter of their galaxy. Other stars are flung far out­side. Many inter­act­ing galax­ies show these tell-tale tidal tails. Galac­tic inter­ac­tions also cause a flurry of star birth as dust and gas is smashed together. Astronomers think that the two spi­ral galax­ies began to inter­act ini­tially. But over time in a rare event, the smaller irreg­u­lar galaxy joined the mix cre­at­ing the unique shape we see today. Astronomers see very few triple galac­tic mergers.

The “wings” of these galax­ies extend more than 100,000 light-years into space. That is about the same size as our Milky Way Galaxy. The head of this trio glows red from an erup­tion of new star for­ma­tion. Hot blue stars can be seen at the head’s crown.

Light from the “The Bird” has been trav­el­ing for a very long time. The group of galax­ies lies more than 650 mil­lion light-years from Earth.