Is this merging or not
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are these galaxys just close together or are they merging
Posted
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by
JeanTate
in response to shawn@offix.co.uk's comment.
They seem to be ETGs (early-type galaxies, commonly called ellipticals). Such galaxies usually lack gas and dust, and often have no disks either. That means that the usual visual signs of merger - tidal tails, distortions, strange dust lanes, etc - are rarely seen, even if two such galaxies are, in fact, merging.
They are close together ... 'in projection'; whether they are close together in real (physical) space is very hard to say; they could be merely overlapping (there are techniques astronomers can use to get a better handle on this, but they are very resource-intensive ...).
Posted
