The photo above is a galaxy known as Arp 122, which shows two different galaxies getting ready to collide. The two galaxies are NGC 6040, as well as LEDA 59642.
According to NASA, this encounter is happening about 570 million light-years from earth. On the bottom right of the image is the elliptical galaxy NGC 6041, a part of the galaxy cluster than Arp 122 resides in. However, this isn’t part of the merger we can see in the right part of the image.
These galaxy collisions are very dramatic, but they take awhile. Our own milky way will eventually collide with the Andromeda Galaxy, which will happen about 4 billion years from now.
The same idea goes for Arp 11 – we won’t exactly know when it will collide, but it will definitely be a very long time from now.
Image Source: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Acknowledgement: L. Shatz
