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Space News Update — November 8, 2016 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

CYGNSS Satellite Mission Aims to Improve Hurricane Forecasting

Story 2:

China Launches Long March 5, One of The World’s Most Powerful Rockets

Story 3:

NASA Missions Harvest a Passel of ‘Pumpkin’ Stars

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

NASA-TV Highlights

Space Calendar

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. CYGNSS Satellite Mission Aims to Improve Hurricane Forecasting

Artist's concept of one of the eight Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System satellites deployed in space above a hurricane. Credit: NASA

Technology has always progressed on waves of innovation. In the business of tropical system monitoring, a

new set of satellites managed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, aims to ride a new

wave of advanced weather prediction and storm tracking.

Previous space-borne instruments have been unable to accurately measure ocean surface winds in the inner

core of hurricanes because their signals are degraded in regions of heavy precipitation. The Cyclone Global

Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), a collection of eight low-cost, low-Earth orbiting microsatellite

observatories that will travel to space on a single launch vehicle, is crafted to change that.

CYGNSS will measure surface winds in and near the inner core of tropical systems, including regions beneath

the eyewall and intense inner rain-bands that could not previously be measured from space. The instrument

will make the measurements using direct and reflecting signals from GPS satellites already in orbit.

“It’s all passive,” said Jim Wells, the NASA Langley mission manager of CYGNSS. “You don’t have to worry

about active instruments, like a laser or radar. It’s all using existing GPS signals and technology but on a

miniaturized scale.”

In orbit, each CYGNSS observatory will receive both direct and reflected signals from the GPS satellites. The

direct signals will help pinpoint CYGNSS observatory positions, while the reflected signals respond to ocean

surface roughness, from which wind speed is retrieved.

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“We separate the observatories so that we can end up with all eight evenly spaced around the world,” he

Wells said. “It’s a neat little concept.”

A single satellite can typically measure any location once every two or three days, but the eight CYGNSS

micro-satellites will be able to capture measurements anywhere in the tropical oceans on average once every

seven hours. That will help researchers see how tropical cyclones develop into hurricanes and better

understand what causes the hard-to-predict variations in tropical system intensity.

The mission is slated for launch on Dec. 12, 2016, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, aboard an

Orbital ATK Pegasus XL launch vehicle, with science operations beginning in the 2017 Atlantic hurricane

season.

Potential impact

The ability to monitor and predict rapid changes in hurricane intensity is critical to hurricane forecasters,

hydrologists and the emergency managers who together are responsible for the protection of the health and

welfare of coastal communities.

CYGNSS is designed to remedy the inability of current remote sensors to see through the heavy rain in the

inner core of a hurricane or to observe changes in the storm over short times, said Chris Ruf, CYGNSS principal

investigator and director of the Space Physics Research Laboratory and an atmospheric, oceanic and space

sciences professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“CYGNSS overcomes the first limitation by using a new type of remote sensing technique (GPS signal

scattering) that can penetrate through heavy rain. It overcomes the second limitation by deploying a

constellation of satellites all around the world, so any one place can be viewed much more often,” Ruf said.

Multifaceted involvement

CYGNSS is the first NASA Earth Venture mission in the NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder program. The

University of Michigan is responsible for directing all aspects of CYGNSS mission design and implementation,

including the design of the constellation and production of retrieved surface wind speed estimates. The

Science Operations Center for the mission is located at the University of Michigan.

“It's incredibly rewarding to be able to help design and execute an entire mission, and to see all of the science

and engineering pieces come together as we get closer and closer to launch,” Ruf said. “It's gratifying to have

our science goals be connected so closely to people's everyday lives with better storm warnings.”

The Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, is responsible for building and testing each of the

eight CYGNSS microsatellite observatories, and is the host of the Mission Operations Center, located in

Boulder, Colorado.

Source: NASA Return to Contents

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2. China Launches Long March 5, One of The World’s Most Powerful Rockets

The Long March 5 rocket takes off at 1243 GMT (8:43 a.m. EDT) on Thursday, November 3. Credit: Xinhua

China’s heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket fired into space on a successful inaugural flight Thursday, debuting a brand new launcher that can carry twice the payload of any other Chinese booster and setting a keystone for the country’s ambitions for a space station and interplanetary exploration. The maiden test flight gives China a rocket that nearly identically matches the capability of the world’s current space lift leader, United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4-Heavy rocket, and exceeds the performance of other heavy-lifters like Europe’s Ariane 5 and Russia’s Proton launcher. The Long March 5 rocket, the product of two decades of research and at least nine years of construction, fabrication and testing, is a centerpiece of China’s plans to assemble a permanently-crewed space station in orbit and send robotic missions to the moon and Mars. The powerful launcher, driven by 10 engines on its first stage and strap-on boosters, took off at 1243 GMT (8:43 a.m. EDT; 8:43 p.m. Beijing time) Thursday, Nov. 3rd from the Wenchang space center on Hainan Island off the southern coast of the Chinese mainland. The launch was delayed nearly three hours to resolve concerns with a liquid oxygen venting system and temperatures inside the Long March 5’s engines. The rocket’s two core stage YF-77 engines, burning a mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and flying on a rocket for the first time, ignited with a burst of orange flame in the final seconds of the countdown. Eight

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kerosene-fueled YF-100 engines, arranged in pairs of two on four strap-on rockets, fired seconds later to propel the beefy booster off the pad. The Long March 5 quickly soared through a deck of low clouds on top of 2.4 million pounds of thrust, and on-board cameras showed the rocket climbing into the stratosphere as it arced east from Wenchang over the South China Sea. The YF-75D engines are upgraded, restartable versions of China’s earlier single-use cryogenic upper stage

engines. The twin-engine upper stage fired for around six minutes to reach a preliminary low-altitude parking

orbit.

China has disclosed little information about the Shijian 17 satellite carried by the new rocket, except that it

carries an electric thruster test package, a type of propulsion system that could give the spacecraft great

maneuverability to efficiently adjust its orbit and move around the geostationary belt, home to most of the

world’s communications satellites.

Thursday’s successful launch will clear the way for China to send a robot to the moon next year on top of

another Long March 5 rocket to retrieve and return samples from the lunar surface. The Chang’e 5 mission is

the next step in China’s lunar program, which has so far dispatched two orbiters and a rover to the moon.

A Long March 5 launch in 2018 is scheduled to loft the Tianhe 1 core section of China’s planned space station,

and subsequent Long March 5 flights will add two more 20-ton research modules to the complex by 2022.

Two Chinese astronauts are currently in orbit practicing procedures and testing technologies for the space

station. The crew is living aboard the Tiangong 2 space lab, a precursor to the station outpost, for about a

month.

China’s first Mars rover set for launch to the red planet in 2020 will also need the Long March 5’s heavy-lift

capability.

The Long March 5 is the biggest of three new liquid-fueled Chinese rockets launched for the first time in the

last 14 months. The Long March 6 light-class booster and the medium-lift Long March 7 rocket made their

inaugural flights in September 2015 and in June, respectively.

The new rockets eliminate the use of toxic propellants like hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide needed by China’s

Long March 2, 3 and 4-series, replacing them with more environmentally-friendly kerosene and hydrogen.

Thursday’s launch was the second spaceflight to blast off from the new Wenchang launch center, a seaside facility completed in 2014 to primarily serve as a base for the Chinese space program’s civilian missions. The tropical spaceport on Hainan Island is closer to the equator than China’s other launch facilities, giving rockets an extra boost in speed from Earth’s spin, and it allows launchers to drop their boosters in the ocean instead of on land.

China has at least two basic variants of the Long March 5 on the drawing board. The version selected for Thursday’s maiden test flight has a second stage for geostationary and interplanetary missions. China says it is capable of delivering a payload of up to 14 metric tons, or nearly 31,000 pounds, to geostationary transfer orbit, nearly identically matching the lift capability of ULA’s Delta 4-Heavy and exceeding that of the European Ariane 5 rocket. A shorter configuration without the second stage, named the Long March 5B, could place up to 25 metric tons,

or 55,000 pounds, into low Earth orbit several hundred miles up, just shy of the Delta 4-Heavy’s capacity to

the same orbit.

Source: Spaceflight Now Return to Contents

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3. NASA Missions Harvest a Passel of ‘Pumpkin’ Stars

This artist's concept illustrates how the most extreme "pumpkin star" found by Kepler and Swift compares with the sun.

Both stars are shown to scale. KSw 71 is larger, cooler and redder than the sun and rotates four times faster. Rapid spin

causes the star to flatten into a pumpkin shape, which results in brighter poles and a darker equator. Rapid rotation also

drives increased levels of stellar activity such as starspots, flares and prominences, producing X-ray emission over 4,000

times more intense than the peak emission from the sun. KSw 71 is thought to have recently formed following the merger

of two sun-like stars in a close binary system. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Francis Reddy

Astronomers using observations from NASA's Kepler and Swift missions have discovered a batch of rapidly

spinning stars that produce X-rays at more than 100 times the peak levels ever seen from the sun. The stars,

which spin so fast they've been squashed into pumpkin-like shapes, are thought to be the result of close

binary systems where two sun-like stars merge.

"These 18 stars rotate in just a few days on average, while the sun takes nearly a month," said Steve Howell,

a senior research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, and leader of the team.

"The rapid rotation amplifies the same kind of activity we see on the sun, such as sunspots and solar flares,

and essentially sends it into overdrive."

The most extreme member of the group, a K-type orange giant dubbed KSw 71, is more than 10 times larger

than the sun, rotates in just 5.5 days, and produces X-ray emission 4,000 times greater than the sun does at

solar maximum.

These rare stars were found as part of an X-ray survey of the original Kepler field of view, a patch of the sky

comprising parts of the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. From May 2009 to May 2013, Kepler measured the

brightness of more than 150,000 stars in this region to detect the regular dimming from planets passing in

front of their host stars. The mission was immensely successful, netting more than 2,300 confirmed exoplanets

and nearly 5,000 candidates to date. An ongoing extended mission, called K2, continues this work in areas of

the sky located along the ecliptic, the plane of Earth's orbit around the sun.

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"A side benefit of the Kepler mission is that its initial field of view is now one of the best-studied parts of the

sky," said team member Padi Boyd, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,

Maryland, who designed the Swift survey. For example, the entire area was observed in infrared light by

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, and NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer observed many parts of it in

the ultraviolet. "Our group was looking for variable X-ray sources with optical counterparts seen by Kepler,

especially active galaxies, where a central black hole drives the emissions," she explained.

Using the X-ray and ultraviolet/optical telescopes aboard Swift, the researchers conducted the Kepler–Swift

Active Galaxies and Stars Survey (KSwAGS), imaging about six square degrees, or 12 times the apparent size

of a full moon, in the Kepler field.

"With KSwAGS we found 93 new X-ray sources, about evenly split between active galaxies and various types

of X-ray stars," said team member Krista Lynne Smith, a graduate student at the University of Maryland,

College Park who led the analysis of Swift data. "Many of these sources have never been observed before in X-

rays or ultraviolet light."

For the brightest sources, the team obtained spectra using the 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory in

California. These spectra provide detailed chemical portraits of the stars and show clear evidence of enhanced

stellar activity, particularly strong diagnostic lines of calcium and hydrogen.

The researchers used Kepler measurements to determine the rotation periods and sizes for 10 of the stars,

which range from 2.9 to 10.5 times larger than the sun. Their surface temperatures range from somewhat

hotter to slightly cooler than the sun, mostly spanning spectral types F through K. Astronomers classify the

stars as subgiants and giants, which are more advanced evolutionary phases than the sun's caused by greater

depletion of their primary fuel source, hydrogen. All of them eventually will become much larger red giant

stars.

A paper detailing the findings will be published in the Nov. 1 edition of the Astrophysical Journal and is now

available online.

Forty years ago, Ronald Webbink at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign noted that close binary

systems cannot survive once the fuel supply of one star dwindles and it starts to enlarge. The stars coalesce to

form a single rapidly spinning star initially residing in a so-called "excretion" disk formed by gas thrown out

during the merger. The disk dissipates over the next 100 million years, leaving behind a very active, rapidly

spinning star.

Howell and his colleagues suggest that their 18 KSwAGS stars formed by this scenario and have only recently

dissipated their disks. To identify so many stars passing through such a cosmically brief phase of development

is a real boon to stellar astronomers.

"Webbink's model suggests we should find about 160 of these stars in the entire Kepler field," said co-author

Elena Mason, a researcher at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics Astronomical Observatory of

Trieste. "What we have found is in line with theoretical expectations when we account for the small portion of

the field we observed with Swift."

The team has already extended their Swift observations to additional fields mapped by the K2 mission.

Source: NASA Return to Contents

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The Night Sky

Source: Sky and Telescope Return to Contents

Thursday, November 10

Around 8 or 9 p.m., depending on where you live, zero-magnitude Capella rises exactly as high in the

northeast as zero-magnitude Vega has sunk in the west-northwest.

Friday, November 11

Saturn is falling ever farther away to the lower right of Venus at dusk, while far to the upper left of

Venus, Mars is drawing closer to it very, very gradually. The scene above is exact for viewers at 40°

north latitude. Far south or north of there, you'll see the view higher or lower and slightly tilted with

respect to how it's drawn here.

By about 8 p.m. now, Orion is clearing the eastern horizon (depending on how far east or west you live

in your time zone). High above Orion shines orange Aldebaran. Above Aldebaran is the little Pleiades

cluster, the size of your fingertip at arm's length. Far left of the Pleiades shines bright Capella.

Can you still see Saturn? And in the coming weeks and months, watch Venus and Mars draw closer together.

Tuesday, November 8

Now the Moon is in Aquarius.

Look to the Moon's lower left for

Fomalhaut, the Autumn Star,

the lonely mouth of Piscis

Austrinus the Southern Fish.

Half as far above the Moon is

the horizontal Water Jar

asterism of Aquarius, fairly dim.

Algol in Perseus shines at its

minimum brightness, magnitude

3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for a

couple hours centered on 7:19

p.m. EST.

Wednesday, November 9

Happy 82nd birthday, Carl

Sagan (November 9, 1934 –

December 20, 1996). If only…

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ISS Sighting Opportunities (from Denver)

Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Wed Nov 9, 5:16 AM 1 min 12° 12° above NNW 10° above NNE

Thu Nov 10, 6:00 AM 1 min 10° 10° above N 10° above NNE

Fri Nov 11, 5:09 AM < 1 min 10° 10° above N 10° above N

Sat Nov 12, 5:53 AM 2 min 12° 10° above NNW 10° above NNE

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Time Zone)

Thursday, November 10

12 p.m. - Video File of the ISS Expedition 50-51/Soyuz MS-03 Crew’s Pre-Launch Activities at the

Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (Novitskiy, Whitson, Pesquet; recorded from Nov. 1-10) (all

channels)

1 p.m. - NASA Science Media Briefing on Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) Mission

(all channels)

Friday, November 11

6 a.m. - Live Interviews with NASA Scientists -- Noah Petro, Alex Young and Nayi Castro – on the

November 14 Super Moon (NTV-3 (Media))

10 a.m. - Heroes and Legends Grand Opening Ceremony (all channels)

12 p.m. - Video File of the ISS Expedition 50-51/Soyuz MS-03 Crew Activities at the Baikonur

Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (Novitskiy, Whitson, Pesquet) (all channels)

Watch NASA TV online by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

Nov 08 - Comet P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) Perihelion (2.005 AU)

Nov 08 - Comet 288P Perihelion (2.436 AU)

Nov 08 - Apollo Asteroid 2016 TT93 Near-Earth Flyby (0.071 AU)

Nov 08 - Robert Esnault-Pelterie's 135th Birthday (1881)

Nov 08 - Edmund Halley's 360th Birthday (1656)

Nov 09 - Moon Occults Neptune

Nov 09 - Comet P/2007 T6 (Catalina) At Opposition (1.458 AU)

Nov 09 - Comet 324P/La Sagra Closest Approach To Earth (1.997 AU)

Nov 09 - Comet 22P/Kopff At Opposition (2.462 AU)

Nov 09 - Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup At Opposition (3.691 AU)

Nov 09 - Comet C/2015 X8 (NEOWISE) At Opposition (3.741 AU)

Nov 09 - Apollo Asteroid 428694 Saule Closest Approach To Earth (0.487 AU)

Nov 09 - Asteroid 9954 Brachiosaurus Closest Approach To Earth (1.417 AU)

Nov 09 - Asteroid 172996 Stooke Closest Approach To Earth (1.632 AU)

Nov 09 - Asteroid 9340 Williamholden Closest Approach To Earth (2.637 AU)

Nov 09 - Centaur Object 54598 Bienor At Opposition (14.484 AU)

Nov 09 - 55th Anniversary (1961), Robert White Becomes 1st Man to Reach Mach 6

Nov 09 - Arthur Rudolph's 110th Birthday (1906)

Nov 09 - Benjamin Banneker's 285th Birthday (1731)

Nov 10 - Comet 73P-BG/Schwassmann-Wachmann Closest Approach To Earth (1.755 AU)

Nov 10 - Apollo Asteroid 2004 KB Near-Earth Flyby (0.026 AU)

Nov 10 - Atira Asteroid 2012 VE46 Closest Approach To Earth (1.236 AU)

Nov 10 - Asteroid 249519 Whitneyclavin Closest Approach To Earth (1.922 AU)

Nov 10 - Robert Innes' 155th Birthday (1861)

Nov 11 - Apollo Asteroid 2016 VQ Near-Earth Flyby (0.007 AU)

Nov 11 - 50th Anniversary (1966), Gemini 12 Launch (Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin)

Nov 11 - Cassini, Distant Flyby of Tethys

Nov 11 - Comet 73P-BF/Schwassmann-Wachmann Perihelion (0.993 AU)

Nov 11 - Asteroid 301 Bavaria Closest Approach To Earth (1.883 AU)

Nov 11 - Apollo Asteroid 2016 VA1 Near-Earth Flyby (0.029 AU)

Nov 11 - Vladimir Solovyov's 70th Birthday (1946)

Nov 11 - 180th Birthday (1836), Macau Meteorite Fall (Hit Cattle in Brazil?)

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

New Theory of Gravity Might Explain Dark Matter

Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Amsterdam

The rotation curve of typical spiral galaxy M33 (yellow and blue points with errorbars) and the predicted one from

distribution of the visible matter (white line). The discrepancy between the two curves is accounted for by adding a dark

matter halo surrounding the galaxy. Though dark matter is by far the most accepted explanation of the rotation problem,

other proposals have been offered, including Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) and this new theory of Emergent

Gravity. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

A new theory of gravity might explain the curious motions of stars in galaxies. Emergent gravity, as the new

theory is called, predicts the exact same deviation of motions that is usually explained by inserting dark matter

in the theory. Professor Erik Verlinde, renowned expert in string theory at the University of Amsterdam and the

Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics, published a new research paper today in which he expands his

groundbreaking views on the nature of gravity.

In 2010, Erik Verlinde surprised the world with a completely new theory of gravity. According to Verlinde,

gravity is not a fundamental force of nature, but an emergent phenomenon. In the same way that

temperature arises from the movement of microscopic particles, gravity emerges from the changes of

fundamental bits of information, stored in the very structure of spacetime.

Newton’s Law from information

In his 2010 article, On the origin of gravity and the laws of Newton, Verlinde showed how Newton’s famous

second law, which describes how apples fall from trees and satellites stay in orbit, can be derived from these

underlying microscopic building blocks. Extending his previous work and work done by others, Verlinde now

shows how to understand the curious behavior of stars in galaxies without adding the puzzling dark matter.

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Puzzling star velocities

The outer regions of galaxies, like our own Milky Way, rotate much faster around the center than can be

accounted for by the quantity of ordinary matter like stars, planets and interstellar gasses. Something else has

to produce the required amount of gravitational force, and so dark matter entered the scene. Dark matter

seems to dominate our universe: more than 80 percent of all matter must have a dark nature. Hitherto, the

alleged dark matter particles have never been observed, despite many efforts to detect them.

No need for dark matter

According to Erik Verlinde, there is no need to add a mysterious dark matter particle to the theory. In a new

paper, which appeared today on the ArXiv preprint server, Verlinde shows how his theory of gravity accurately

predicts the velocities by which the stars rotate around the center of the Milky Way, as well as the motion of

stars inside other galaxies. “We have evidence that this new view of gravity actually agrees with the

observations,” says Verlinde. “At large scales, it seems, gravity just doesn’t behave the way Einstein’s theory

predicts.”

At first glance, Verlinde’s theory has features similar to modified theories of gravity like MOND (Modified

Newtonian Dynamics, Mordehai Milgrom 1983). However, where MOND tunes the theory to match the

observations, Verlinde’s theory starts from first principles. “A totally different starting point,” according to

Verlinde.

Adapting the holographic principle

One of the ingredients in Verlinde’s theory is an adaptation of the holographic principle, introduced by his tutor

Gerard ‘t Hooft (Nobel Prize 1999, Utrecht University) and Leonard Susskind (Stanford University). According

to the holographic principle, all the information in the entire universe can be described on a giant imaginary

sphere around it. Verlinde now shows that this idea is not quite correct: part of the information in our universe

is contained in space itself.

Information in the bulk

This extra information is required to describe that other dark component of the universe: the dark energy,

which is held responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. Investigating the effects of this

additional information on ordinary matter, Verlinde comes to a stunning conclusion. Whereas ordinary gravity

can be encoded using the information on the imaginary sphere around the universe only — as he showed in

his 2010 work — the result of the additional information in the bulk of space is a force that nicely matches the

one so far attributed to dark matter.

On the brink of a scientific revolution

Gravity is in dire need of new approaches like the one by Verlinde, since it doesn’t combine well with quantum

physics. Both theories, the crown jewels of 20th century physics, cannot be true at the same time. The

problems arise in extreme conditions: near black holes, or during the Big Bang. Verlinde: “Many theoretical

physicists like me are working on a revision of the theory, and some major advancements have been made.

We might be standing on the brink of a new scientific revolution that will radically change our views on the

very nature of space, time and gravity.”

Article reference

Emergent Gravity and the Dark Universe, E. P. Verlinde, https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.02269

Source: Astronomy Now /Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Explanation: Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered a

tsunami of stars and gas that is crashing midway through the disk of a spiral galaxy known as IC 2163. This colossal

wave of material – which was triggered when IC 2163 recently sideswiped another spiral galaxy dubbed NGC 2207

– produced dazzling arcs of intense star formation that resemble a pair of eyelids. The ALMA image of carbon

monoxide (orange), which revealed motion of the gas in these features, is shown on top of Hubble image (blue) of

the galaxy.

“Although galaxy collisions of this type are not uncommon, only a few galaxies with eye-like, or ocular, structures

are known to exist,” said Michele Kaufman, an astronomer formerly with The Ohio State University in Columbus and

lead author on a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Kaufman and her colleagues note that the paucity of similar features in the observable universe is likely due to their

ephemeral nature. “Galactic eyelids last only a few tens of millions of years, which is incredibly brief in the lifespan

of a galaxy. Finding one in such a newly formed state gives us an exceptional opportunity to study what happens

when one galaxy grazes another,” said Kaufman.

The interacting pair of galaxies resides approximately 114 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the

constellation Canis Major. These galaxies brushed past each other – scraping the edges of their outer spiral arms –

in what is likely the first encounter of an eventual merger.

Source: National Radio Astronomy Observatory Return to Contents

Tsunami of Stars and Gas Produces Dazzling Eye-shaped Feature in Galaxy Image Credit: Credit: M. Kaufman; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); NASA/ESA

Hubble Space Telescope