Caught on camera: the beautiful dance of a pair of galaxies, the spiral galaxy NGC 152 and its smaller neighbour, NGC 1510.
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This pair of galaxies is 60 million light years from Earth and can be seen in the constellation Horologium (Jam) in the southern sky.
The outer tendrils of NGC 1512 stretch out as if to envelop the little NGC 1510. Meanwhile, the stream of shining stars that bridges the two galaxies is evidence of the gravitational interaction between them. A process that has been going on for 400 million years!
The interaction that occurs due to gravity affects the rate of star formation in both galaxies and changes the shape of both. In the future, the two galaxies will merge into a large new galaxy.
Scientists working with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), one of the most advanced cameras in the world, have captured the interaction of the two galaxies. This Dark Energy Camera is mounted on the Victor M. Blanco 4 meter telescope in Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), Chile.
Cool Facts:
It took 6 years from 2004-2010 to design and manufacture the Dark Energy Camera aka DECam. This camera was created for dark energy surveys, an international project to map hundreds to millions of galaxies and to find thousands of supernovae. The goal is to understand dark energy and its role in accelerating the expansion of the Universe.
Source: This article is a republished version of Space Scoop Universe Awareness Indonesian edition. Indonesian edition of Space Scoop translated by langitselatan.
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