{"id":33463,"date":"2011-04-03T15:43:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-03T15:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/when-beauty-and-science-collide-bad-astronomy\/"},"modified":"2011-04-03T15:43:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T15:43:00","slug":"when-beauty-and-science-collide-bad-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/when-beauty-and-science-collide-bad-astronomy.php","title":{"rendered":"When beauty and science collide | Bad Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&rsquo;ve been posting a lot of nice astronomical images lately, but sometimes one comes along and blows me completely away. How fantastically gorgeous is <em>this?<\/em><\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gemini.edu\/images\/pio\/20110322_NGC6872.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/3ce7d_gemini_ngc6872.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"610\" height=\"642\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-30223\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p>Holy Haleakala! [Click to galactinate.] <\/p><p>That spiral galaxy is NGC 6872, and as you can see <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gemini.edu\/node\/11625\">in this image<\/a> from the Gemini South telescope it&rsquo;s getting its clock cleaned by the littler spiral &mdash; IC 4970 &mdash; just to the right. The two are undergoing a galactic collision, a colossal event playing out over hundreds of millions of years. NGC 6872 is currently the victim here; its spiral arms are clearly distorted and being flung wide by the gravitational interaction. However, the smaller IC 4970 will be the ultimate loser in this battle: it will fall into the bigger galaxy, be torn apart, and eventually consumed in its entirety, becoming a part of NGC 6872. Bigger galaxies do this to smaller ones all the time; the Milky Way is in the process of eating several small galaxies even as you read this (I have details in articles linked below; see <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/pipes.yahoo.com\/pipes\/pipe.info?_id=b1f7827b1dfe342d3c7cc9be64d477ac#relatedposts\"><em>Related Posts<\/em><\/a>).<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/chandra.harvard.edu\/photo\/2009\/ngc6872\/ngc6872.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/3ce7d_chandra_spitzer_ngc6872.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"257\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/CqhElN9LZLS3yqjMbdvNsp5VlHc\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/3ce7d_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/CqhElN9LZLS3yqjMbdvNsp5VlHc\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/3ce7d_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/3ce7d_SUY9ZwD26CE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/3ce7d_hFuDrWO7fcs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&rsquo;ve been posting a lot of nice astronomical images lately, but sometimes one comes along and blows me completely away. How fantastically gorgeous is this?Holy Haleakala! [Click to galactinate.] That spiral galaxy is NGC 6872, and as you can see &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/when-beauty-and-science-collide-bad-astronomy.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}