A Cosmic Exclamation Point
NASA recently released an image of two galaxies colliding together in the formation of an enormous exclamation point.
NASA explained that, “VV 340, also known as Arp 302, provides a textbook example of colliding galaxies seen in the early stages of their interaction. The edge-on galaxy near the top of the image is VV 340 North and the face-on galaxy at the bottom of the image is VV 340 South. Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) are shown here along with optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue).”
VV 340 is some 450 million light years away from earth (4.5 x 10+26). “Millions of years later these two spirals will merge—much like the Milky Way and Andromeda will likely do billions of years from now” (10+09).
The visible mass energy in a galaxy like ours (the Milky Way) is 10+58, and yet, incredibly, “These galaxies generate energy at a rate that is tens to hundreds of times larger than that emitted by a typical galaxy.”