Venus and Jupiter ‘kiss' in the sky: Know the best time and place to watch the planetary conjunction
This is not just fiction, it teaches us about the grand future awaiting our own Milky Way.
Recently, astronomers studied this distant 'dance' of the Milky Way and a neighbouring galaxy that helps us understand how galactic structures form and evolve.
Galaxies are doing their cosmic 'dance' but for what?
According to the study is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, under a collaboration between the University of Queensland and the Australian National University, astronomers Delegate survey, have turned their telescopes toward a cosmic neighborhood inhabited by two spirals, NGC 5713 and NGC 5719.
These galaxies are currently in the late stages of merging, roughly 3 billion years ahead of the collision we forecast between the Milky Way and Andromeda.
Dr. Sarah Sweet, leading the survey, says in the study, 'The Milky Way will merge with Andromeda and their respective smaller dwarf galaxies in the next 2.5 billion years … we don't know how typical it is,'. To examine this, the team studied NGC 5713 and NGC 5719, observing how their dwarf satellite galaxies dance around them.
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According to Dr. Sweet, 'This paper shows these galaxies—NGC5713 and NGC5719—combine as if they were dancing with the closely located dwarf satellites rotating around them' , as reported by the Australian National University.
Why does that matter?
Dr. Sweet also says, 'Without such a merger, the galaxies might remain in a randomly distributed cloud, not arranged in beautiful, coherent planes like those around the Milky Way and Andromeda'.
This structured arrangement among satellites tells about a pattern that might surface in our own Local Group.
Professor Helmut Jerjen of Australian National University says to the University reporter, 'We will test whether the Milky Way and Andromeda Local Group is a poster child or a cosmic outlier'. He says that current models struggle to replicate how dwarf galaxies align in satellite planes, suggesting our simulations may need a serious update.
Why do
galactic mergers
happen?
Galaxy mergers happen simply because of gravity. Galaxies move through space, and when two drift close enough, their mutual gravitational pull draws them together, eventually leading to a collision or merger. According to NASA, as the galaxies merge, gravitational forces simultaneously change their shapes, release streams of stars and gas or 'tidal tails', and compress gas clouds.
If the colliding galaxies don't pass through cleanly, they coalesce into a single larger galaxy, often changing spirals into elliptical or irregular shapes. Such mergers also funnel gas toward their centers, feeding central black holes and sometimes triggering dramatic changes.
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