The good people at Hubble call this lovely photo an image of two galaxies' "dance." Maybe this is one of those Rorschach test situations, but to me it looks a little more predatory than the average waltz.
The photo, a composite image taken by the Hubble telescope, depicts the "Arp 87" galaxy pair first cataloged in the 1960s by astronomer Halton Arp, in his Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (another book I clearly have to get my hands on).
The new image shows details of structure and star formation that the older photos, taken through the Hale and Samuel Oschin telescopes at Palomar, were unable to capture.
With material being drawn out of the larger galaxy on the right, to encircle the smaller, what we're seeing is the possible early stages of a slow collision, or merging of galaxies. Already the shape of both has been distorted by the gravitational pull between them.
The Arp 87 pair is located about 300 million light-years away from
Earth, in the constellation Leo. The observations that form the image were taken in February 2007, by combining light from blue, green, red, and infrared ranges.
Hubble sees the graceful dance of two interacting galaxies [Hubble press release]
(Image: The Arp 87 galaxy pair. Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
