Galaxy’s petal-like structures came from collision

A cosmic crash of two huge masses of stars, gas and dust probably gave way to structure of star clusters

GETTING SLAMMED  The concentric shells of PGC 6240 (shown) and the young star clusters that orbit it may have formed when the galaxy smashed into another one.

Judy Schmidt/Hubble’s Hidden Treasures, Hubble, ESA, NASA

Not too long ago, galaxy PGC 6240, shown in a Hubble Space Telescope image, probably slammed into another huge swirl of stars, gas and dust. Such a cosmic crash would have shot ripples of energy through the galaxies, completely destroying their original structures. It could also have sparked star formation both within galaxies and in the regions of space around them, astronomers say.

Scientists have closely studied PGC 6240, which sits 350 million light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Hydrus, to piece together the events leading up to and immediately after a galactic collision.

PGC 6240 emerged from the likely crash sporting concentric, petal-like shells that sweep out from the galaxy. Combined, the shells give the galaxy its elliptical shape.                                                              

Swirling about the galaxy’s shells are globular clusters, groups of stars that are densely packed and gravitationally bound to each other. Most galaxies have such clusters orbiting them; the clusters tend to form at about the same time, meaning the stars are all about the same age. Some of PGC 6240’s clusters contain only old stars. But others are made of young stars, which suggests to astronomers that a relatively recent cosmic crash sparked new stars to form.

Ashley Yeager is the associate news editor at Science News. She has worked at The Scientist, the Simons Foundation, Duke University and the W.M. Keck Observatory, and was the web producer for Science News from 2013 to 2015. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT.

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