Violent Origins of Disk Galaxies: Galaxy Collision

16 September, 2014 / Read time: 1 minute

CG movie of a collision between two galaxies, leading to the formation of a disk galaxy. Upon merging, the shape of the galaxies is disturbed by gravitational interaction and grow into a galaxy with a disk structure.

Observations of colliding galaxies using ALMA and other radio telescopes have revealed that collisions between galaxies are likely to result in a galaxy with a gaseous disk structure. This is an important result, which gives us a clue about how disk galaxies like our own Milky Way form.

Credit: National Astronomy Observatory of Japan (NAOJ)