Cosmic Rose of NASA

April 22, 2021

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently shared an image of “Cosmic Rose”.

Cosmic Rose

Cosmic Rose is an image captured by Hubble Space Telescope of NASA. The image featured interacting galaxies Arp 273.

Arp 273

It lies in the Andromeda constellation.
It is 300 million light years away from the earth.
It is a combination of spiral galaxy UGC 1810 and UGC 1813.
UGC 1810 is five times heavier than UGS 1813.
The UGC 1810 has a disc that is tidally distorted into a rose like shape. The distortion is mainly due to the gravitational pull of UGC 1813 that lies beneath. This has been captured by Hubble Space Telescope.

What are Interacting Galaxies?

The Interacting Galaxies are those galaxies whose gravitational fields disturb one another.

Types of Galaxy Interactions

Galaxy harassment

Galaxy harassment is an interaction between a low-luminosity galaxy and a brighter one. It is usually common in rich galaxy clusters such as Coma and Virgo.

Galactic Cannibalism

It is a process where a large galaxy interacts with a companion through tidal gravitational interactions. A Galactic tide is a force experienced by objects subjected to gravitational field of a galaxy.

Galaxy Collision

These are common during galaxy evolution. In these interactions, two galaxies will collide and will not have enough momentum to continue travelling after collision.

Galaxy Mergers

Galaxy merger occurs when two or more galaxies collide with each other. They are the most violent type of galaxy interactions. Galaxy mergers are highly important as they are the fundamental measure of Galaxy evolution.