NASA Releases Images of Spiral Galaxies on a ‘Spooky’ Cosmic Collision Course

No, these aren’t the eyes of a giant celestial being. These are a pair of galaxies which are locked in a deadly dance on a cosmic collision course.

Transcript

00:00No, these aren't the eyes of a giant celestial being.

00:07These are a pair of galaxies, which are on a cosmic collision course.

00:11They are named NGC 2207 and IC 2163, and they were recently photographed by a joint venture

00:17between the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes.

00:20They reside some 80 million light years away, and NASA has caught them in the final dervish

00:25of their galactic merging dance.

00:27When galaxies collide, they don't just go boom, rather they orbit and swing around one

00:31another for often millions of years.

00:33During that time, they spiral, and the contents of each begin to intertwine as they siphon

00:37material away from one another.

00:39According to NASA, this galactic pair has already swung around one another once millions

00:43of years ago, and now they're doing it again.

00:46However, these galaxies are also still doing their thing, that is to say they're still

00:49forming baby stars, dozens of them each, every year.

00:53However, because of the tumultuous conditions within the galaxies, caused by the stretching

00:57and compressing of material due to this death dance, those stars have a short lifespan,

01:01exploding in massive supernovae, events that cause a chain reaction of more star formation

01:07and destruction.