A Twisted Sister Galaxy

By Nancy Atkinson - April 13, 2011 05:56 PM UTC | Extragalactic

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This is an older image from Hubble but I came across it today and wanted to share it. It shows an unusual edge-on galaxy, that has been twisted by a recent collision with a nearby galaxy, and is in the process of being swallowed up. This could be a spiral sister to our own Milky Way, as the dust and arms of normal spiral galaxies appear flat when viewed edge-on. And the twisting effect could be an example of what could happen to our galaxy in about 3 billion years when it begins to collide with the Andromeda galaxy.

As the gravitational forces distort the structures of the galaxies as their stars, gas, and dust merge together, it also sparks star formation. In the outer regions of ESO 510-G13, especially on the right-hand side of the image, the twisted disk contains not only dark dust, but also bright clouds of new, blue stars. Eventually, in millions of years, all the matter will coalesce and the activity and disturbances will die out, and ESO 510-G13 will become a normal-looking single galaxy.

This galaxy was first observed by ESO's ground based telescopes, and Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) observed ESO 510-G13 in April 2001.

See more about the image at the HubbleSite.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com