The ALMA Observatory and the space telescope James Webb managed to capture a collision of an intruder galaxy in Stephan’s Quintet that is helping astrophysicists to understand the behavior of gas in deep space, a very important aspect of understanding how stars form.
The Stephan’s Quintet is a group of five galaxies located about 280 million light years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus, which was first observed in 1878 by Édouard Stephan.
Following the new observation made in cooperation with the Chile’s Large Atacama Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the James Webb Space Telescopescientists have found new data to understand what happens when one galaxy collides violently with another, particularly in this region where the galaxies NGC 7317, NGC 7318a, NGC 7318b, NGC 7319 and NGC 7320 converge.
According to a statement from the ALMA Observatory, this new observation has helped astronomers to understand how the turbulence generated by the shock waves resulting from the collision between a galaxy and the Quintet influence the gas in the intergalactic medium, forming a kind of warm and cold molecular hydrogen gas recycling plant.
According to the research published by the ALMA Observatory, this group of galaxies in the constellation Pegasus provides an original environment for the study of galaxy collisions and their impact on the surrounding environment, due to the fact that, in general, galaxy collisions and mergers trigger a burst of star formation; that’s not the case at Stephan’s Quintet. Instead, this violent activity takes place in the intergalactic medium, far from galaxies in places where there is little or no star formation to obstruct the view.
This has helped astronomers find data for analysis about what is What happens when one of the galaxies NGC 7318b violently intrudes on the group at a speed of about 800 kilometers per second.
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As first identified results, the scientists found that when a galaxy collides with the group it first impacts an old column of gas that was likely caused by a subsequent colliding interaction of the other two galaxies, generating a giant shock wave.
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