Galaxy Merger

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There has been a surprising affinity between astronomy and music. Both needed the inspiration of the muses to be performed in Ancient Greece, and expressions like the Music of the Spheres just shows the profound link between these two realms of human genius. In space, nobody can hear you scream, but it didn’t stop Coltrane […]

Our 7th feature is about elliptical galaxies. Elliptical galaxies are the other main class of galaxies we find in our universe. They have a spherical stellar distribution, meaning simply that their stars’ orbits are not in a plane any more, and instead have random orientations.

The Seven Wonders of the Milky Way are: The Sagittarius stream, a long, complex, structure made of stars that wrap in polar orbit around the Galaxy. It consists of tidally stripped stars from the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy. The multi-planet planetary system around the millisecond pulsar PSR 1257+12.

In the first Astroholic Vlog, I present a soap box talk (minus the box) about merging galaxies.

Galaxy mergers are violent interactions between galaxies and they are consider one of the fundamental steps in how galaxies form and evolve. Mergers occur when two (or more) galaxies collide. This interaction can radically alter the overall structure of the progenitors due to the tidal forces between the galaxies and the friction between the gas […]