Image Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/SAO/E.Nardini et al); Optical (NASA/STScI)
Colors processing: Exoplanet.sg
NGC 6240 Merging Galaxies
It does not looks like any typical spiral galaxy with well-defined spiral arms. Arms of gas and dust are stretched in various directions with irregular shapes. What happened to this galaxy? In fact, we are looking at two galaxies instead of one! What we saw in this image is two merging galaxies, called NGC 6240. Two smaller galaxies have drifted too close to each other. Gravitational pull from the two galaxies is causing them to collide with one another. Ten to hundreds of millions of years from now, the merger will form a much larger galaxy with a supermassive black hole – another colossal merger from the two smaller black holes from the original galaxies.