07-11-99

Hello AIG members (and few others)

What a wonderful time to be alive!

The Hubble Space Telescope has just captured a magnificent photograph of two spiral galaxies passing each other like majestic ships in the night (see attached image).

The two galaxies first encountered each other over 50 million years ago.

The larger and more massive one (on the left) is distorting the shape of the smaller one, flinging out stars and gas into long streamers stretching out a hundred thousand light-years (visible toward the right-hand edge of the image).

The smaller one does not have sufficient energy to escape from the gravitational pull of the larger one, and is destined to be pulled back and swing past the larger galaxy again in the future.

Trapped in their mutual orbit around each other, these two galaxies will continue to distort and disrupt each other. Eventually, billions of years from now, they will merge into a single, more massive galaxy.

It is believed that many present-day galaxies, including the Milky Way, were assembled from a similar process of galaxies uniting over billions of years.

What a privilige to be able to catch even glimpses of such ageless and massivley powerful events - thanks to science and modern technology.

Regards

Mario Di Maggio
Astronomy Interest Group
Durban Natural Science Museum