NASA has released a beautiful photo taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of NGC 5256, a striking example of two disk galaxies that are about to merge.
This Hubble image shows NGC 5256, a pair of galaxies in its final stage of merging. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.
NGC 5256 is located in the constellation Ursa Major, approximately 350 million light-years from Earth.
Also known as Markarian 266, the object is composed of two disk galaxies whose nuclei are currently just 13,000 light-years apart. Their constituent gas, dust, and stars are swirling together in a vigorous cosmic blender, igniting newborn stars in bright star formation regions across the galaxy.
Interacting galaxies can be found throughout the Universe, producing a variety of intricate structures.
Some are quiet, with one galaxy nonchalantly absorbing another. Others are violent and chaotic, switching on quasars, detonating supernovae, and triggering bursts of star formation.
While these interactions are destructive on a galactic scale, stars very rarely collide with each other in this process because the distances between them are so vast.
But as the galaxies entangle themselves, strong tidal effects produce new structures before settling into a stable arrangement after millions of years.
In addition to the bright and chaotic features, each galaxy of NGC 5256 contains an active galactic nucleus, evidence that the chaos is allowing gas to fall into the regions around central black holes as well as feeding starbursts.
Both nuclei, as well as a region of hot gas in between them, have been heated by the shock waves driven as gas clouds at high velocities collide.
Galaxy mergers, like the one NGC 5256 is currently experiencing, were more common early in the Universe and are thought to drive galactic evolution.
This image of NGC 5256 is a composite of separate exposures acquired by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide-Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instruments.
Several filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
