How can you explain that trail?
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by marisa_gomez
Please help with this one!!! Beautiful picture. So active! How can that trail be explained?
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by Capella05 moderator
I would go with a late stage merger. Here is the larger image from SkyServer:
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One of the explanations for the trail is due to a hot jupiter which is migrating terribly close to it's star. The average temperature on a hot jupiter may be up to a few thousand degrees celcius. This boiling temperature causes the hot jupiter to lose thousand tonnes of air every second, leaving a trail of gas spiraling behind the planet for thousands of kilometers. Hence this may explain the trail.
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by ElisabethB moderator in response to mongsiedoodles's comment.
You do realize that you are looking at a galaxy with hundreds of millions even billions of stars. There is no way that a single star, let alone a planet can cause these kind of disturbances ! This galaxy can only be disturbed by another galaxy.
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