Misterious star tail, tausands of lightyears long.
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The stars seems to be sucked away from the galaxy over tousands of light years. If you see close in it, at the bottom right, you see the stars/ dust curving to the right and up and being pushed away from each other. I think there might be a super massive object we can't see.
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Looking more closely at this, it appears to be a tidal tail of the central galaxy. These tails form when companion object(s) of sufficient mass, such as the nearby yellow ellipticals and possibly the blue galaxy on the right, exert gravitational force on the object and distort the orbit of stars in the galaxy, pulling them out and away into thin streams. Additionally, these tails can form when satellite galaxies are torn up in a process known as "tidal disruption", and absorbed by the larger galaxy. As user jq2uoz pointed out, the objects all have fairly similar redshifts, so it's likely safe to assume that either (at least) one of them has made a close pass, or a smaller satellite has recently been accreted by the central galaxy 😃
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Huh, makes sense what you say.
I feel stupid now. Maybe that bright object to the right with the lense effect has something to do with the disruption.
But whatever, I'm not an expert :pPosted
