Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have produced an outstanding image of a trio of merging galaxies called SDSSCGB 10189.
This Hubble image shows SDSSCGB 10189, a trio of merging galaxies located in the constellation of Boötes. Further to the left is an unconnected, dimmer spiral galaxy. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Sun.
SDSSCGB 10189 is a compact group of galaxies located in the constellation of Boötes.
“This colliding trio is a relatively rare combination of three large star-forming galaxies lying within only 50,000 light-years of one another,” Hubble astronomers said.
“While that might sound like a safe distance, for galaxies this makes them extremely close neighbors!”
“Our own galactic neighbors are much further away; Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way, is more than 2.5 million light-years away from Earth.”
“These three galaxies are set on a collision course and will eventually merge into a single larger galaxy, distorting one another’s spiral structure through mutual gravitational interaction in the process,” they added.
“An unrelated foreground galaxy appears to float serenely alongside the collision, and the smudged shapes of much more distant galaxies are visible in the background.”
This observation of SDSSCGB 10189 was designed to help astronomers understand the origin of the largest, most massive galaxies in the Universe.
“These galactic behemoths are called Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) and — as the name suggests — are defined as the brightest galaxies in any given galaxy cluster,” the researchers explained.
“Astronomers suspect that BCGs form through the merger of large, gas-rich galaxies like the ones in this image.”
The color image of SDSSCGB 10189 is made up of observations from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the ultraviolet, near-infrared, and optical parts of the spectrum.
It is based on data obtained through three filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
“We turned to Hubble’s ACS and WFC3 instruments to investigate this galactic trio in painstaking detail, hoping to shed light on the formation of the Universe’s most massive galaxies,” the scientists said.
