![]() |
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.
APOD across world languages:
Arabic,
Catalan,
Chinese (Beijing),
Chinese (Taiwan),
Croatian,
Czech,
Dutch,
Farsi,
French,
French,
German,
Hebrew,
Indonesian,
Japanese,
Korean,
Montenegrin,
Polish,
Russian,
Serbian,
Slovenian,
Spanish and
Ukrainian
January February March April May June July August September October November December |
|
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: interacting galaxies
Publications with words: interacting galaxies
See also:
- APOD: 2025 March 12 B NGC 772: The Fiddlehead Galaxy
- Peculiar Galaxies of Arp 273
- APOD: 2025 January 6 B Colliding Spiral Galaxies from Webb and Hubble
- Shell Galaxies in Pisces
- APOD: 2024 July 15 B The Tadpole Galaxy from Hubble
- Unraveling NGC 3169
- APOD: 2023 October 24 B Arp 87: Merging Galaxies from Hubble