NGC 6052 May Be How Andromeda and Milky Way Look in Few Billion Years

Summary: The Hubble Space Telescope reveals that NGC 6052 is not an abnormal galaxy but a galaxy colliding and merging with another by which two galaxies become one.

Image of galaxy NGC 6052, around 230 million light years away in constellation of Hercules, taken by Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 aboard NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope; two separate galaxies are merging; eventually they will stabilize into a shape that may not resemble either of original two galaxies: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt via NASA

Astronomers are having to change astronomic theories and galactic classifications after examining images taken of galaxy NGC 6052 with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Observatory.

It becomes clear from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s and European Space Agency’s Hubble Space Telescope that galaxy NGC 6052 is not an abnormal galaxy. The image consolidates reclassifying New General Catalogue 6052, also known as Arp 209 or NGC 6064 or PGC 57039 + PGC 200329, to colliding, merging galaxy. Astrophysicists describe the collision or merger as taking place in the constellation of Hercules at a distance of about 230 million light years away from Earth.

Astronomers expect similar collisions and mergers for the Milky Way Galaxy, whose age they estimate at 10 to 13.6 billion years, in the constellation of Sagittarius.

Astronomers find collision an unanticipated explanation for the atypical, chaotic, single-structured look of galaxy NGC 6052 even though mergers are observable in other images from Hubble.

They give Messier 81 and the Cigar Galaxy, Messier 82, a few million years to merge into one galaxy 12 million light years away from Earth. Messier 64 has the nicknames Black Eye or Sleeping Beauty Galaxy from collisions over a billion years ago at a distance of 17 million light years. Messier 104, the Sombrero Galaxy, is a flat disc galaxy embedded in an elliptical galaxy in the Virgo galactic cluster 28 million light years from Earth.

The hundred-million-year-old, work-in-progress Antennae Galaxies, 62 million light years away in the constellation of Corvus, juxtapose two galaxies, categorized as NGC 4038 and as NGC 4039.

NGC 1316 keeps battle-scarred traces of collisions with spiral galaxies through tidal tails from stellar shells severed and tossed by gravity 75 million light years away.

Spiral galaxy NGC 922 looks distorted from a smaller galaxy passing through its center, where heavy element-rich gases atypically do not prevent a black hole’s creation. Asymmetrical, warped spiral arms make it clear UGC 1813 drove through UGC 1810 to form Arp 372’s rose-reminiscent galaxy duo 300 million light years from Earth. Pandora’s Cluster, 4 billion light years away from Earth, nudges four colliding, merging, small galaxies into one galactic clump over the course of 350 million years.

MACS J0717.5+4745, shortened to MACS J0717 or MACS 0717, offers galactic clusters A, B, C and D colliding 5.4 billion years away in the constellation Auriga.

Galactic collisions such as those merging into NGC 6052 provide astronomers with predictive scenarios for the collision and merger of the two most famous sister galaxies.

Astronomers quantify the collision and merger of the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.53 million light years from Earth, with the Milky Way to a few billion years hence. Nirmala Nataraj, author of Earth and Space: Photographs from the Archives of NASA, reveals that such mergers “often leave many of their respective star systems intact.” NASA image-related statements suggest that the merging, “new galaxy will settle down into a stable shape, which may not resemble either of the two original galaxies.”

The future collisions of the black hole-riddled, similar-aged Andromeda Galaxy and of the dark matter-heavy Milky Way Galaxy most likely tend toward chaotic, NGC 6052-like mergers.

predicted merger between Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies; present day (top left) and approaching Andromeda in 2-3.75 billion years (top right; second row left); new star formation, 3.85-3.9 billion years (second row right, third row left); tidally stretched Andromeda and warped Milky Way in 4 billion years (third row right); Andromeda and Milky Way cores as pair of bright lobes in 5.1 billion years (fourth row left); bright core of merged Andromeda/Milky Way in 7 billion years (fourth row right): NASA; ESA; Zoltan Levay and Roeland van der Marel, STScI (Space Telescope Science Institute); Tony Hallas and Axel Mellinger via NASA

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

two merging galaxies: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt, Public Domain, via NASA @ http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/hubble-views-two-galaxies-merging

predicted merger between Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies; first row -- present day (left), in 2 billion years, with noticeably larger disk of approaching Andromeda galaxy (right); second row -- in 3.75 billion years Andromeda fills field of view (left), in 3.85 billion years sky blazes with new star formation (right); third row -- in 3.9 billion years, continued star formation(left); in 4 billion years, tidally stretched Andromeda and warped Milky Way (right); fourth row -- in 5.1 billion years appearance of cores of Milky Way and Andromeda pair of bright lobes (left), in 7 billion years, bright core of huge elliptical galaxy formed by merged galaxies dominates nighttime sky: NASA; ESA; Zoltan Levay and Roeland van der Marel, STScI (Space Telescope Science Institute); Tony Hallas and Axel Mellinger via NASA @ https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/milky-way-collide.html

For further information:

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Available @ http://www.jstor.org/stable/40676499?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

“Galaxy NGC 6052.” DSO Browser > Information.
Available @ http://dso-browser.com/dso/info/NGC/6052

GeoBeats News. 26 November 2015. "Hubble Captures Image Of Two Galaxies In Later Stages Of Merging As One." YouTube.
Available @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-tfCPzFY0I

“Hubble Sees Two Galaxies Become One.” Astronomy Now > 28 Dec. 2015.
Available @ https://astronomynow.com/tag/ngc-6052/

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Available @ https://www.rt.com/usa/328133-hubble-space-galaxies-merging/

Luciani, Massimo. 3 January 2016. “NGC 6052 is the Product of Two Galaxies That Are Merging.” Tachyon Beam.
Available @ http://english.tachyonbeam.com/2016/01/03/ngc-6052-is-the-product-of-two-galaxies-that-are-merging/

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Available @ http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/iauc/05200/05276.html

Morrow, Ashley. 30 December 2015. “Hubble Views Two Galaxies Merging.” NASA > Hubble.
Available @ http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/hubble-views-two-galaxies-merging

NASA @NASA. 30 December 2015. ".@NASA_Hubble sees 2 galaxies merging into a single structure, 230 million light-years away." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/NASA/status/682316232364822528

NASA Feature. 31 May 2012. "NASA's Hubble Shows Milky Way Is Destined for Head-On Collision." NASA > Missions > Hubble Space Telescope.
Available @ https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/milky-way-collide.html

Nataraj, Nirmala. 2015. Earth and Space: Photographs from the Archives of NASA. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books LLC.

Schmidt, Judy. 28 December 2015. “Hubble Image of the Week: Galaxy NGC 6052.” SciTech Daily > Space.
Available @ http://scitechdaily.com/hubble/

Seligman, Courtney. “NGC 6052 ( = NGC 6064 = Arp 209 = PGC 57039 + PGC 200329).” cseligman.com > Online Astronomy Text > Sky Atlas.
Available @ http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc60a.htm#6052