Latest Interacting galaxies Stories

Astronomers think that there are enormous black holes at the centers of most, if not all, galaxies. These black holes, which can be millions or even billions of times more massive than the Sun, can greatly affect the galaxy and the environments around them. One way such black holes shape their surroundings is by generating powerful jets of high-energy particles. The jets, which are bright in radio waves, have been seen to push around the hot gas that envelopes the galaxy. When this happens,...

A pair of interacting galaxies might be experiencing the galactic equivalent of a mid-life crisis. For some reason, the pair, called Arp 82 (see photo), didn't make their stars early on as is typical of most galaxies. Instead, they got a second wind later in life "“ about 2 billion years ago "“ and started pumping out waves of new stars as if they were young again. The new observations are from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Southeastern...

Since 1999, a lot of things have come and gone -- the Y2K bug, a slew of boy bands and a new Star Wars trilogy. But NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which unveiled its first images just a few months shy of the new millennium, continues to make headlines seven years later. Maybe it's because Chandra's subjects are timeless -- black holes, distant galaxies, and stars that don't reside in Hollywood. And they're long-lasting -- with stellar lives that span billions of years. Or maybe it's...

Staring into the crowded, dusty core of two merging galaxies, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a region where star formation has gone wild.The interacting galaxies appear as a single, odd-looking galaxy called Arp 220. The galaxy is a nearby example of the aftermath of two colliding galaxies. In fact, Arp 220 is the brightest of the three galactic mergers closest to Earth. This latest view of the galaxy is yielding new insights into the early universe, when galactic wrecks were...

New VLT Images Reveal the Surroundings of a Super-massive Black HoleESO -- Near-infrared images of the active galaxy NGC 1097, obtained with the NACO adaptive optics instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope, disclose with unprecedented detail a complex central network of filamentary structure spiralling down to the centre of the galaxy. These observations provide astronomers with new insights on how super-massive black holes lurking inside galaxies get fed. "This is possibly the first...