(Photo from National Geographic)From e! Science News:
Astronomers studying new images of a nearby galaxy cluster have found evidence that high-speed collisions between large elliptical galaxies may prevent new stars from forming, according to a paper to be published in a November 2008 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Led by Jeffrey Kenney, professor and chair of astronomy at Yale, the team saw a spectacular complex of warm gas filaments 400,000 light-years-long connecting the elliptical galaxy M86 and the spiral galaxy NGC 4438 in the Virgo galaxy cluster, providing striking evidence for a previously unsuspected high-speed collision between the galaxies. The view was constructed using the wide-field Mosaic imager on the National Science Foundation telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.
"Our data show that this system represents the nearest recent collision between a large elliptical galaxy and a large spiral galaxy," said Kenney, who is lead author of the paper. "This discovery provides some of the clearest evidence yet for high-speed collisions between large galaxies, and it suggests a plausible alternative to black holes as an explanation of what turns off star formation in the biggest galaxies."
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