A new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows Arp 230, a peculiar galaxy located at a distance of about 80 million light-years.
This image shows the peculiar galaxy Arp 230. Image credit: ESA / Hubble / NASA.
Arp 230, also known as IC 51, lies in the direction of the constellation Cetus.
The galaxy has the mass of 8,700 million suns. It is isolated with no nearby dwarfs or companions of known redshift. The nearest neighbors, a group of four galaxies, are about two million light-years away.
The morphology of the galaxy strongly suggests that it’s the result of a head-on collision between two spiral galaxies.
The collision took place approximately 100 million years ago and led to a burst of star formation which is now fading or over.
Arp 230 has an aligned and interleaved system of at least eight bright, sharp shells.
It is rather exceptional among ‘shell galaxies,’ most of which have fewer and less distinct shells.
That the shells in this galaxy resulted from an accretion or merger event is supported by the fact that the most distant shell is connected to the main stellar body by a faint distorted tail.
The appearance and profile of Arp 230 suggest that it may become elliptical.
