Astronomy Picture of the Day

Good Sunday Morning Maj William W. 'Bill' Price and thank you for this awesome image of colliding galaxies known as ARP-87. I did find a short clip of Hubble searching out this galaxy dance!

Christos Sotiropoulos, Published on Jan 18, 2008
Hubble's latest quarry is a pair of galaxies known collectively as Arp 87 one of hundreds of interacting and merging galaxies known in our nearby Universe. This movie from the space telescope zooms in from the constellation of Leo to show Arp 87 in exquisite detail, capturing the distortion the pair are undergoing as gas, dust and stars are sucked from one to the other in a corkscrew-shaped bridge.

Credit: ESA/Hubble

https://youtu.be/1TZXoMgUxMs




Maj William W. 'Bill' Price Maj Marty Hogan COL Mikel J. Burroughs Lt Col Charlie Brown SSG Byron Howard Sr LTC Stephen F. Col Carl Whicker Maj Robert Thornton CWO3 Dennis M. LTC Wayne Brandon Sgt Deborah Cornatzer PO3 Bob McCord CW5 Jack Cardwell TSgt Joe C. SFC Stephen Lucas SMSgt Lawrence McCarter Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen MSgt Robert "Rock" Aldi SrA Marianne Santangelo Sgt Albert Castro

Another day- another lesson learned. Thanks Maj William W. 'Bill' Price

LTC Stephen F. SP5 Mark Kuzinski COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter Maj William W. 'Bill' PriceCPL Dave Hoover SSG William Jones Sgt Vance Bonds Cpl (Join to see) PO1 H Gene Lawrence Maj Robert Thornton PO3 Bob McCord SPC Douglas Bolton Lt Col Charlie Brown TSgt Joe C. PO3 Craig Phillips CW5 Jack Cardwell SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SGT Mark Anderson SPC Margaret Higgins

Thank you, my friend Maj William W. 'Bill' Price for posting the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) for Sunday August 11 entitled "Arp 87: Merging Galaxies from Hubble."
Image: Arp 87 - Merging Galaxies from Hubble - Image Credit - NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI, AURA)
"Explanation: This dance is to the death. Along the way, as these two large galaxies duel, a cosmic bridge of stars, gas, and dust currently stretches over 75,000 light-years and joins them. The bridge itself is strong evidence that these two immense star systems have passed close to each other and experienced violent tides induced by mutual gravity. As further evidence, the face-on spiral galaxy on the right, also known as NGC 3808A, exhibits many young blue star clusters produced in a burst of star formation. The twisted edge-on spiral on the left (NGC 3808B) seems to be wrapped in the material bridging the galaxies and surrounded by a curious polar ring. Together, the system is known as Arp 87 and morphologically classified, technically, as peculiar. While such interactions are drawn out over billions of years, repeated close passages should ultimately result in the death of one galaxy in the sense that only one galaxy will eventually result. Although this scenario does look peculiar, galactic mergers are thought to be common, with Arp 87 representing a stage in this inevitable process. The Arp 87 pair are about 300 million light-years distant toward the constellation Leo. The prominent edge-on spiral galaxy at the far left appears to be a more distant background galaxy and not involved in the on-going merger."

FYI Sgt (Join to see) Maj Marty Hogan TSgt Joe C. SGT Steve McFarland CW5 Jack Cardwell SPC Margaret Higgins