FREEWHEELING GALAXIES COLLIDE IN A BLAZE OF
STAR BIRTH
A dusty spiral galaxy appears to be rotating on
edge, like a pinwheel, as it slides through the
larger, bright galaxy NGC 1275 in this NASA Hubble
Space Telescope image.
These images, taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary
Camera 2 (WFPC2), show traces of spiral structure
accompanied by dramatic dust lanes and bright blue
regions that mark areas of active star formation.
Detailed observations of NGC 1275 indicate that
the dusty material belongs to a spiral system seen
nearly edge-on in the foreground. The second galaxy,
lying beyond the first, is actually a giant elliptical
with peculiar faint spiral structure in its nucleus.
These galaxies are believed to be colliding at over
6 million miles per hour.
NGC 1275 is about 235 million light-years away
in the constellation Perseus. Embedded in the center
of a large cluster of galaxies known as the Perseus
Cluster, it is also known to emit a powerful signal
at both X-ray and radio frequencies. The galaxy
collision causes the gas and dust already existing
in the
central bright galaxy to swirl into the center of
the object. The X-ray
and radio emission indicates the probable existence
of a black hole at
the bright galaxy's center.
While the dark dusty material in the Hubble image
falls inward,
NGC 1275 displays intricate filamentary structures
at a much larger
scale outside the image. This is a typical feature
of bright cluster
galaxies. Additional observational evidence of strong
interactions
between at least two galaxies, and possibly a few
smaller galaxies,
includes the formation of new stars and large star
clusters. Although
similar in shape to the old globular clusters in
the Milky Way galaxy,
NGC 1275's clusters are much younger and contain
100,000 to a million
stars each.
This image was created from archived blue and red
Hubble WFPC2 data
taken in 1995 by John Trauger (JPL) and Jon Holtzman
(NMSU). The Hubble
Heritage team, along with collaborators Megan Donahue,
Jennifer Mack,
and Mark Voit (STScI), took follow-up WFPC2 observations
at infrared
wavelengths in 2001 to help produce this full-color
image.
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team
(STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: M. Donahue (STScI) and J. Trauger
(JPL)
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