debbie millman

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Spiral Galaxies in Collison

From my new favorite website: Astronomy Picture of the Day.

This picture is from a few days ago and is titled Spiral Galaxies in Collision.

The explanation (from the site) is as follows:
Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars. Astronomers predict that NGC 2207, the larger galaxy on the left, will eventually incorporate IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the right. In the most recent encounter that peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging around counter-clockwise, and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in them usually do not collide.

As you can well imagine, they feature lucious new photographs everyday.

Credit: Debra Meloy Elmegreen (Vassar College) et al., & the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)

Via Kottke.

4 Comments:

Blogger EB said...

one of my favourite favourite things is astronomy…well, pictures of it anyway. thanks for sharing, definitely bookmarking!

4/22/2008 10:12:00 AM  
Blogger Mary Campbell said...

This looks like something out of the Madeline L'Engle Time series!

4/22/2008 10:19:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

wow that's eerie

4/22/2008 07:52:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think stars have 21 crystals in them, a vibe like 4031, 718, 62, 11, 4

5/17/2008 05:45:00 PM  

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