Image of the Day: Cosmic Illusion --A Galaxy Mashup
In an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, the galaxy formerly known as NGC 3314 looks like an interacting pair of galaxies, but is actually an accidental overlapping of two galaxies which just happen to be in the same line of sight from Earth. The two galaxies are actually tens of millions of light-years apart moving in different directions, about 10 times the distance between our own Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy.
NGC 3314A appears to have a slightly warped shape due to an encounter with another nearby galaxy, but astronomers believe that encounter to have been with the large spiral galaxy NGC 3312, not visible in the image. The NGC 3314B dust lanes appear lighterbecause they are illuminated by the bright stars in the front galaxy. The dust in the front galaxy, in contrast, appears darker because it is backlighted by stars in NGC 3314B.
The Daily Galaxy via nasa.gov/mission
Comments
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Now this is a perfect place to look at a galactic core in the optical range. Almost looks like too much background light though.
Posted by: smartypants | June 16, 2012 at 11:46 AM
interesting.
Posted by: Mapelia Pilar the advocate | June 16, 2012 at 07:15 PM
I love these types of photographs.
http://bit.ly/Mh8UAG
Posted by: Swapna | June 17, 2012 at 12:42 AM
http://hologramuniverse.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/ngc-3314-galaxies-spiral-arms-have-connecting-filaments-that-stream-stars/
Posted by: Norbert | July 01, 2012 at 03:23 AM