A Galaxy Collision in
NGC 6745
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
Galaxies don't normally
look like this. NGC
6745 actually shows the results of two galaxies that have been colliding for only
hundreds of millions of years.
Just off the digitally
sharpened photograph to the lower right is the smaller galaxy, moving
away.
The larger galaxy, pictured above,
used to be a spiral
galaxy but now is damaged and appears peculiar. Gravity has distorted the
shapes of the galaxies.
Although it is likely
that no stars in the two galaxies
directly collided, the gas, dust, and ambient magnetic fields do
interact directly.
In fact, a knot of gas pulled off the
larger galaxy on the lower right has now begun to form stars.
NGC 6745 spans about 80
thousand light-years across and is located about 200 million light-years away.
