Zooming to a Pair of Merging Galaxies | ESO

Zooming to a Pair of Merging Galaxies | ESO

This video zooms into a galactic merging event in deep space, like a ‘cosmic joust’. One of these galaxies is piercing the other with intense radiation, emitted by a quasar at its core. This radiation is disrupting the gas and dust inside the other galaxy, dampening its ability to form stars.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers resolved these two galaxies despite how close they are to each other in the sky. Using the X-shooter instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), they examined how radiation affected the material inside the galaxy being bombarded by a quasar.

The various images shown here were blended together to create this zoom. They come from a range of telescopes, observing at distinct times, ending with a close-up of the galaxies as seen by ALMA. At the very end, we see an artist’s illustration depicting how the beam of radiation affects the companion galaxy.

Credit: ESO/L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger/Digitized Sky Survey 2/DESI Legacy Survey/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Balashev and P. Noterdaeme et al.
Duration: 1 minute
Release Date: May 21, 2025

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