(ORDO NEWS) — The telescope’s new image shows two entangled galaxies that will eventually merge into a single elliptical galaxy in about 500 million years.
The Gemini North telescope, located atop Maunakea in Hawaii, has detected a merger of spiral galaxies in the constellation Virgo at a distance of about 60 million light-years from us.
The galactic pair NGC 4567 and NGC 4568, also known as the Butterfly galaxies, have just begun to collide under the influence of gravity.
This event anticipates the possible similar fate of our Milky Way galaxy, which in about 4-5 billion years will collide with the Andromeda galaxy, our largest and closest galactic neighbor.
It is unlikely that the solar system will die in the merger of the Milky Way and Andromeda, according to NASA scientists, but the Sun will be in a new region of the galaxy, and the Earth‘s night sky will take on new spectacular views.
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