Huge 4 way merger?
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by
metalmania
Are these 4 really merging? or are they different distances? it's hard to tell as there's not much disturbance...yet.
Posted
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by
Capella05
moderator
Difficult to tell as only the central galaxy has a redshift value available (z=0.084). The photoZ of the other objects have quite high error margins, and range from 0.064 to a massive 0.284! So it would be best to disregard them.
Just from looking at the image and seeing the lack of interaction between the central galaxy and the other galaxies, I would say overlap rather than merger. We do have a nice tidal tail and some star streams between the galaxies on the lower right.
Here is the SDSS zoomed out image:
Posted