Simulations by Case astronomer used to link
Hubble Space Telescope
images of colliding galaxies
Posted 24-April-2008
In a new
release of images from the Hubble Space Telescope, simulations by
Case astronomer Chris Mihos and collaborator Lars Hernquist (Harvard)
have been used to illustrate the evolution of colliding galaxies.
A collision of two galaxies can take hundreds of millions of years to
evolve, meaning that astronomers cannot watch a single collision evolve
over the course of time. Instead, they study many different galaxies
undergoing collisions and attempt to knit the images together into a
consistent picture of galaxy evolution.
Colliding galaxy images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Click on the
image to go to the Space Telescope website and see larger views.
Computer simulations like the ones by Mihos allow astronomer to watch
galaxy collisions unfold on the computer, and understand in detail how
galaxies are affected by these collisions. As shown in the
visualization of Mihos' simulations below, the comparison to real
galaxies can be striking!
