Astronomers using the Wide Field Camera 3 aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have captured a striking new image of two interacting galaxies collectively known as Arp 142. Arp 142 is located in the southern constellation Hydra about 326 million light-years away. The pair contains a star-forming spiral galaxy called NGC 2936 along with its elliptical companion NGC 2937 at lower left. Once part of a flat, spiral disk, the orbits of stars in NGC 2936 have become scrambled due to gravitational tidal interactions with NGC 2937. Gas and dust drawn from the heart of NGC 2936 becomes compressed during the encounter, which in turn triggers star formation. These bluish knots are visible along the distorted arms that are closest to the companion elliptical. The elliptical galaxy NGC 2937 is a puffball of stars with little gas or dust present. The NGC 2937’s are mostly old, as evidenced by their reddish color. There are no blue stars that would be evidence of recent star formation. Above Arp 142, one can find an unrelated, bluish galaxy known as UGC 5130. It appears to be an elongated irregular or an edge-on spiral. Located 230 million light-years away, UGC 5130 is much closer to us than Arp 142, and therefore is not interacting with the pair. Source: sci-news/astronomy Herr von Bradford
Posted on: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 09:38:10 +0000
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