Via Brad Harrigan
These two galaxies that are often referred to as Arp 302, are located approximately 450 million light-years from Earth. As you can see, these two photogenic spiral galaxies are in the initial stages of merging into one larger elliptical galaxy, which gives astronomers a front row seat to observe the ultimate fate of the Milky Way when it inevitably collides with its nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy in about 4 billion years.The two galaxies emit a startling amount of infrared light that's typically hundreds of times more than the amount emitted by typical galaxies, classifying them as luminous infrared galaxies. These galaxies are extremely interesting for astronomers to monitor since the cause of the large amount of infrared radiation emitted by the galaxies is largely unknown. It's believed that at the center of VV 340 North (top) exists a supermassive black hole that is steadily growing in size, yet it's obstructed from our view due to surrounding gas and dust particles. Another theory suggests that the galaxies are subject to an intense bursts of star formation similar to open and globula clusters, which could be the source of the the heightened amount of energy that's being released.
- Jaime
http://
http://www.space.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/
No comments:
Post a Comment