All articles tagged with #galaxy merger
Space.com’s Space Photo of the Day spotlights NGC 7253, a pair of spiral galaxies in a gravitational merger captured by Gemini North on Maunakea. The image—named Nā 'Uhane Māhoe Huki Pū i ke Ola by student discoverers—highlights how galaxy interactions trigger star formation and reveal the dynamic cosmos; NGC 7253 lies about 200 million light-years away in Pegasus.
New studies show the forecast of a Milky Way–Andromeda merger is far from settled: a 2025 Nature Astronomy analysis using Hubble and Gaia data suggested roughly 50–50 odds for a merger within the next 10 billion years, while a 2026 follow-up with Gaia-based motions pushed the probability toward about 90% under its preferred model; the results depend on uncertain motions and nearby galaxies (Triangulum and the Large Magellanic Cloud), and they distinguish between a first close approach and a final merger. Precise proper-motion measurements—down to microarcseconds per year—are needed to narrow the forecast.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured a striking image of Arp 263 (NGC 3239), a distorted irregular galaxy about 25 million light-years away thought to be the product of a past merger between two galaxies. Its stars aren’t aligned with its hydrogen gas, indicating a gravitational tug-of-war with a former companion now dissolved; a foreground Milky Way star, BD+17 2217, appears in the frame. Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera reveals clusters of newly formed stars within dusty regions, offering new insights into stellar nurseries and the complex history of this peculiar galaxy.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope marks its fourth anniversary with a stunning infrared image of Centaurus A, a nearby galaxy shaped by a two‑billion‑year merger. JWST’s infrared vision through dust reveals millions of stars and details of the galaxy’s active center, including jet-driven gas flows and a warped, star-forming disk tied to its supermassive black hole, illustrating how AGN activity can sculpt galactic structure and advancing our understanding of galaxy evolution.
NASA/ESA/CSA’s James Webb Space Telescope imaging shows a chaotic merger of at least six galaxies (TGSSJ1530+1049) at redshift ~4, about 12 billion years ago, in the early universe. The tightly packed system is expected to fuse into a colossal elliptical at the center of a future galaxy cluster, while a developing supermassive black hole powers radio jets, offering a rare glimpse into how massive galaxies and black holes grow together in the universe’s youth.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists observe the distant galaxy merger CRISTAL-02 and find a powerful outflow of gas—a galactic wind—that's removing fuel faster than stars can form, potentially quenching future star formation; the wind is likely driven by merger-triggered starbursts and supernovae (with a possible role for a central black hole), offering insight into early galaxy growth and illustrating a space-weather-like phenomenon in the cosmos.
Astronomers have identified a group of 20 ancient, very metal-poor stars in the Milky Way's disk with mixed prograde and retrograde orbits and nearly identical chemistry, suggesting they are remnants from a long-ago dwarf galaxy dubbed Loki, potentially swallowed about 10 billion years ago; while not definitive, the finding supports the view that the Milky Way grew through mergers, a conclusion increasingly supported by Gaia data and galactic archaeology.
Astrophotographer Greg Meyer captured a near-21-hour deep-space image of the Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038/NGC 4039) in Corvus as they violently merge into a single elliptical galaxy, revealing orange-yellow cores, tangled dust, and sweeping tidal tails that fuel bursts of star formation; shot with a Sky-Watcher Esprit 120 at Starfront Observatory in Texas, the photo highlights the dramatic gravitational tug-of-war and the likely dispersion of most newly formed star clusters over time.
Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope detected a bright, narrow 18-centimeter hydroxyl emission line from the distant galaxy system HATLAS J142935.3-002836 at z=1.027 (about 8 billion light-years away). The signal is amplified by a foreground galaxy’s gravitational lensing and the background merger’s dense, energized gas, pushing it toward megamaser/gigamaser levels. The rapid detection in a few hours demonstrates MeerKAT’s capability to find distant hydroxyl emitters in wide surveys.
Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope have detected the brightest and most distant hydroxyl megamaser from a galaxy merger about 8 billion light-years away. The signal, amplified by gravitational lensing, may qualify as a gigamaser and provides a rare beacon to study how ancient galaxies form and evolve; scientists hope to find many more such megamasers to map the cosmos’s history.
Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope spotted an extremely bright hydroxyl maser in the distant galaxy merger H-ATLAS J142935.3–002836, whose signal was amplified by an unrelated foreground galaxy acting as a gravitational lens, yielding the first gigamaser—about 100,000 times the luminosity of a star—and enabling new ways to probe cosmic evolution from billions of light-years away.
JWST captured a distant galaxy that looks like a giant question mark, created by two merging galaxies and magnified by gravitational lensing; the image offers a window into galaxy formation and cosmic evolution, showcasing the power of Webb's infrared observations.
Astronomers have discovered a rare cosmic event involving three galaxies in the process of merging, each hosting an actively feeding supermassive black hole emitting radio jets, providing new insights into galaxy and black hole growth.
Astronomers have confirmed the first known system where three galaxies, each hosting active supermassive black holes, are merging, providing new insights into galaxy and black hole evolution through high-resolution radio imaging. The system, located 1.2 billion light-years away, shows all three black holes actively feeding and launching jets, a rare and significant discovery that advances our understanding of cosmic growth processes.
The James Webb Space Telescope captured a detailed image of the merging spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163, revealing an intricate web of cosmic chaos, complemented by Chandra's X-ray data highlighting high-energy regions, providing insights into galaxy interactions.