Explanation:
Is this what will become of our Milky Way Galaxy?
Perhaps if we
collide with the Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years, it might.
Pictured above is NGC 7252, a jumble of stars created by a
huge collision between two large galaxies.
The collision will take hundreds of millions of years and so is
effectively caught frozen in time in the
above image.
The resulting pandemonium has been dubbed the
Atoms-for-Peace
galaxy because of its similarity to a
cartoon of a large atom.
The above image
was taken recently by the
MPG/ESO 2.2 meter telescope in
Chile.
NGC 7252 spans about 600,000 light years and lies about 220 million
light years
away toward the
constellation of the
Water Bearer (Aquarius).
Since the sideways velocity of the
Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is presently unknown, no one really knows for sure if the Milky Way will ever
collide with M31.
