Watch two galaxies collide in the middle of the universe, a butterfly appears to a US observatory

Scientists at the Gemini North Observatory, which includes 8-meter telescopes in the US state of Hawaii, managed to achieve an amazing image of a collision between two large spiral galaxies located in the Virgo or “Virgo” galaxy. More than 60 million light-years from Earth, so it appeared in the shape of a beautiful cosmic butterfly, the early stages of the Great Merger fascinated scientists and ordinary people alike.

The amazing nature of the appearance of a different universe from day to day, for observation from space, spacecraft, telescopes and roving satellites, amazes scientists and ordinary people, from which the early galaxy NGC 4568 appeared. A spectacular conjunction with the galaxy NGC 4567 is associated with it through a relationship in the mutual gravitational field, so the patterns continued, the original spiral of the two galaxies is evident in the image published by Al Arabiya.net below. The report was published by NOIRLab, the lab that operates the Gemini North Observatory in Hawaii.

As the collision and slow merger continue, the two galaxies will change into arm-like shapes to the extent that they lose their spiral structures, “the gravitational struggle will lead to intense bursts of star formation, eventually culminating in the formation of a new elliptical galaxy after about 500 million years,” the report says.

The expected event after that distant period gives scientists a new picture, and “idea” of what will happen when the “Milky Way” galaxy collides with our closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, or “Andromeda” 5 billion years from now. As far as can be seen with the naked eye, it is 2.5 million light-years from Earth.

The “butterfly” image produced by the Gemini North Observatory, from data collected in 2020, shows a supernova that resulted from the bright cosmic explosion of a massive star named SN 2020fqv when they first observed it two years ago. It appears in the image as a bright spot located in the middle of one of the spiral arms of one of the two galaxies. After the merger, a galaxy similar to the old neighbor of the two galaxies, Messier 89 “Virgo”, is also known to be old and now only forming low-mass stars.