Hubble sees cosmic 'flying v' of merging galaxies

[Hum]

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken an image of a large "flying V" that is actually two distinct objects -- a pair of interacting galaxies known as IC 2184.

Both the galaxies are seen almost edge-on in the large, faint northern constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe), and can be seen as bright streaks of light surrounded by the ghostly shapes of their tidal tails.

These tidal tails are thin, elongated streams of gas, dust and stars that extend away from a galaxy into space. They occur when galaxies gravitationally interact with one another, and material is sheared from the outer edges of each body and flung out into space in opposite directions, forming two tails. They almost always appear curved, so when they are seen to be relatively straight, as in this image, it is clear that we are viewing the galaxies side-on.

Also visible in this image are bursts of bright blue, pinpointing hot regions where the colliding gas clouds stir up vigorous star formation. The image consists of visible and infrared observations from Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.

source

[Dot Matrix]

First thing that came to my mind: cosmic vagina. :p

[Hum]

I wonder how well planets and/or life survives such mergings.

[Dot Matrix]

I wonder how well planets and/or life survives such mergings.

Relatively unharmed. Space is vast and empty. If anything, it'll spur star formation from all the gas colliding, though.

[Gaffney]

Relatively unharmed. Space is vast and empty. If anything, it'll spur star formation from all the gas colliding, though.

Often a third Galaxy forms from the gas and other material that is flung off. It's rare that stars and planets would get close to each other, space is unimaginably large. But sometimes they do get close to each other and turn into a star pair, if one of them is much larger than the other one it will suck up the material from the other star. They don't really hit each other because they are like big spinning magnets and they push off each other via elecromagnetism which is much stronger than Gravity.