Nov 25, 2015
Sit down and focus on the details in this photo. What you are looking at is a massive collision between two galaxies that happened a very long time ago. The galaxy on the right, NGC 5291, is called the "Seashell" galaxy. These galaxies contain mostly young stars and if you look closely you can see a tidal tail that stretches out 100,000 light years. However, looking a little clsoer you'll see something more incredible... it's that these clumps are actually small dwarf galaxies! Astronomers believe that these dwarf galaxies were born in interstellar space and captured the left over debris from NGC 5291 itself. Credit: CHART32 Team, Processing - Johannes Schedler / APOD #astronomy #nasa #Ngc5291 #galaxies #universe #apod
