Galaxy Zoo Talk

Difference between Tidal debris, galaxy merger and fuzziness

  • kallpet by kallpet

    How can one distinguish between evidence of tidal debris and fuzziness? Further, how can one tell if a galaxy is merging/ about to merge with another rather than the two appearing close but being far away from each other, with their projections appearing close?
    Thanks a lot!
    Petros Kalligas

    Posted

  • ElisabethB by ElisabethB moderator

    Hi Petros and welcome to the Zoo,

    That is a very good question and really not easy (if not impossible) to answer. Sometimes it will be clear and sometimes it will be not clear at all. But just give it your best shot.

    The same actually with galaxies merging/interacting or not. For me, they are interacting when I see disturbances in one or both of the galaxies. But even that can be subjective. But that is the beauty of GZ. : lots of classifications will get us to the best answer. And if the answers are all over the place, that is usually a sign that there is something special going on ! 😄

    So, just try and answer the questions as well as you can and your classifications will help us tremendously !

    Thanks for participating and happy hunting ! 😄

    Posted