Take a good look at the latest image provided by the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows a huge elliptical galaxy called NGC 474 that lies about 100 million light-years away from us.
At about two and a half times larger than our Milky Way Galaxy, it's really a behemoth. Notice its strange structure – mostly featureless and nearly round, but with layered shells wrapped around the central core.
About 4.5 to 5 billion years from now, it will start to merge with the nearby Andromeda Galaxy . Of course, M31 will have moved a lot closer to us in the intervening time.For those of you keeping track of these things, this will happen about when the Sun runs out of hydrogen in its core and begins evolving into a red giant. So, it'll be an interesting time. Mark your calendars.NASA, ESA, and D. Carter/Liverpool John Moores University; Image processing: G.
In addition to all that activity, there's one other hallmark of a merger: starburst knots. They are sites of star formation that occur in the wake of a merger.The activity pushes clouds of gas and dust together, eventually creating scads of hot, young stars. That'll happen as long as there's enough material available to the starbirth nurseries.
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