Two similarly-sized spiral galaxies — NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 — swing past each other in a cosmic dance choreographed by gravity.
Two spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are locked in a swirling dance in this image from the VIMOS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Image credit: Juan Carlos Muñoz / ESO.
NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 form an intriguing astronomical object named Arp 271.
Originally discovered in 1785 by German-born British astronomer William Herschel, the interacting pair lies about 120 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo and spans about 130,000 light years.
It is not certain if this interaction they undergo will end in a collision and ultimately in a merging of the two galaxies or if the galaxies will experience just a very close encounter.
It is definitely sure that NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are already affecting each other as material was ripped off the galaxies to create a bridge of stars and dust connecting them.
Our own Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision in the far future with the Andromeda galaxy, which is now located about 2.6 million light years away from the Milky Way.
NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are the subject of this, final image captured by the VIsible Multi-Object Spectrograph (VIMOS) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) before the instrument was decommissioned on March 24, 2018.
VIMOS was active on the VLT for an impressive 16 years. During that time it helped scientists to uncover the wild early lives of massive galaxies, observe awe-inspiring triple-galaxy interactions, and explore deep cosmic questions such as how the Universe’s most massive galaxies grew so large.
Instead of focusing on single objects, VIMOS was able to capture detailed information about hundreds of galaxies at once.
This sensitive instrument collected the spectra of tens of thousands of galaxies throughout the Universe, showing how they formed, grew, and evolved.
