2020 March 4
Image Credit: Gemini, NSF, OIR Lab, AURA; Text: Ryan Tanner (NASA/USRA)
Explanation:
If you
like slow dances,
then this may be one for you.
A single turn in this dance takes
several hundred million years.
Two galaxies, NGC 5394 and NGC 5395,
slowly whirl about each other in a
gravitational interaction
that sets off a flourish of sparks in the form of new
stars.
The featured image, taken with the
Gemini North 8-meter telescope on
Maunakea,
Hawaii,
USA, combines
four different colors.
Emission from
hydrogen gas, colored red, marks
stellar nurseries where new stars drive the evolution of the
galaxies.
Also visible are dark
dust lanes that mark gas that will eventually become
stellar nurseries.
If you look carefully you will see
many more galaxies in
the background, some involved in their own slow
cosmic dances.
