A Colossal Cosmic Crash
If the majestic pinwheel structure of this galaxy wasn't beautiful enough, the pink halo seems to give this photograph a calm and magical feeling. But what we're actually seeing here is quite violent. In this picture, a galactic collision is taking place between the grand spiral galaxy and the tiny dwarf galaxy that you can see to its right. The pink mist is actually a huge cloud of gas, burning at millions of degrees Celsius, which forms when these galaxies clash!
Credit:
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Huntingdon Inst. for X-ray Astronomy/G.Garmire, Optical: ESO/VLT
Share:
The EU-UNAWE website was produced by funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme ([FP7/2007-2013]) under grant agreement n° 263325