Is this a merger?

• by adam.cannon

  I think this is a very diffuse galaxy starting to form an acretion disk with a brighter galaxy in the distance behind. Is this correct? Or is it a merger?

  Posted June 3, 2014 10:26 AM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  Hi adam.cannon and welcome tot he Zoo !

  The central yellow object is a galaxy. Too fuzzy to tell whether it is a spiral. Most of the other round objects in this image are foreground stars from our galaxy. No merger here !

  Posted June 3, 2014 3:24 PM

• by JeanTate in response to adam.cannon's comment.

  The fuzzy galaxy appears yellow, or yellow-ish in this image; in SDSS images (like this one) that nearly always means there are very few young stars (relatively speaking) in the galaxy, which in turn means that this galaxy has little 'gas' from which stars can form (it's actually a bit more complicated, but this is a good enough shorthand). Such galaxies have been around for a long time, and are now quite 'cold'* ... so there's no 'starting' going on (and no 'accretion disk' either).

  Happy hunting! 😃

  *this word makes sense, in terms of the physics, once you add 'dynamically' to it 😉

  Posted June 4, 2014 9:02 AM

• by mercury_b

  This is not a merger, my friend.

  Posted June 7, 2014 9:47 AM