Four dwarf galaxies are merging into one.
NASA shared an image from the Hubble Space Telescope that shows an interaction of four dwarf galaxies. Two small galaxies are so close together that they look like one object, called NGC 1741, located at the top of the image. There is a cigar-shaped galaxy close to the right, and a fourth one in the left which is connected to the other three by a stream of young stars.
The set is called the Hickson Compact Group 31, or HCG 31. The group is located 166 million light-years away from Earth, which is1-6556. All four of the galaxies are so close together that they would fit in the same place.
This image is a revised version of an image that was released in 2010 and has been processed to bring out the star-forming regions in the group. The formation of stars is stimulated by the interaction of the mass of the galaxies.
This group is younger than the other dwarf galaxy mergers, which are typically seen very far away. Astronomers were able to use the data from Hubble to see when the galaxies started interacting and when they will eventually merge.
This is a clear example of a group of galaxies on their way to a merger because there is so much gas that is going to mix everything up.
The Large Magellanic Cloud is larger than the small galaxies. They are moving very slowly relative to each other, just 134,000 miles an hour. It's hard to imagine how this system would end up as a single elliptical galaxy.
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