Two galaxy's collide
An unusual and spectacular triangular shape was captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, as reported on the official website of the American Space Agency and CNN.
The pyrotechnic effect would have been the spectacular collision between two galaxies, NGC 2445 , the glittering and spiraling one on the right, and NGC 2444 , less conspicuous than its colleague, on the left. A pair of nearby galaxies baptized by scholars with the initials Arp 143.
Astronomers speculate that they crossed paths, sparking a real storm of stars . On the right side of the image, in fact, you can see a particular ferment. NGC 2445 is dense with gas, the fuel that triggers the star formation process. While the two galaxies "play a cosmic tug-of-war", according to the NASA press release, by interfering with one another on the gravitational force of the other, a triangular strip of stars has been forming. The turbulence started on the outskirts of NGC 2445, but is rapidly moving inward.
"The simulations carried out so far show that frontal collisions between two galaxies can create rings of new stars ," said astronomer Julianne Dalcanton of the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute in New York and the University of Washington in Seattle. The novelty would therefore be the particular triangle shape that the trail of stars has taken on. It is the unusual interaction between the two galaxies - the gravitational field of NGC 2444 remains anchored to the other galaxy, dragging the filaments of stars with it - that distort and alter the classic ring shape of these star clusters.
Although the center of the action is in the far right of NGC 2445, the other galaxy is also unexpectedly lengthening. The clusters in shades of blue are groupings of stars , born no more than 50-100 million years ago, while the pink spots are giant and young stars , 1-2 million years old, still shrouded in gas and dust.