A stunning new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures an ongoing interaction between two active galaxies in the Arp 282 system.
“It is now widely accepted amongst astronomers that an important aspect of how galaxies evolve is the way they interact with one another,” Hubble astronomers said.
“As common as these interactions are thought to be in the Universe, it is rare to capture an image of two galaxies interacting in such a visibly dynamic way.” This is actually rather fortunate, because if the full emission of these two active galactic nuclei was visible in the image, then it would probably obscure tidal interactions occurring between the two galaxies.
“The direction of the tidal forces will be away from the lower-mass object and towards the higher mass object.”