https://www.space.com/hubble-space-g...ion-image.html
A ghastly face with glowing eyes glares in deep space in a new image from the
Hubble Space Telescope.
The piercing "eyes" of this creepy space face are the bright cores of two
distant galaxies in the middle of a head-on collision, and they're surrounded by
a mishmash of stars from their respective galactic disks.
A ring of young blue stars contours the shape of the eerie face, while dense
clumps of stars have come together to form its nose and mouth.
This spooky mug won't be staring off into space forever. The ring structure that
outlines the face will last for only about 100 million years, while the merging
of the two galaxies is expected to take about 1 billion to 2 billion years, NASA
officials said in a statement.
While galaxy collisions are quite common in the universe, head-on collisions
like this one are relatively rare, and the particularly violent nature of this
type of collision gives rise to the peculiar ring shape. "The galaxies have to
collide at just the right orientation to create the ring," NASA officials said.
"The crash pulled and stretched the galaxies' disks of gas, dust, and stars
outward. This action formed the ring of intense star formation that shapes the
nose and face."
But that rare galactic ring isn't the only thing that makes this pair of merging
galaxies special. While most galaxy collisions involve a larger galaxy gobbling
up a smaller neighbor — even our own Milky Way galaxy is guilty of galactic
cannibalism — the two galaxies merging here appear to be roughly the same size.
In other words, there aren't many pairs of symmetric "eyeballs" ogling through
the cosmos.
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