Nov. 26, 1996
Jan. 1, 1995
Comet-Like objects in Heart of Cartwheel Galaxy
Located 500 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor, the Cartwheel galaxy looks like a wagon wheel. The galaxy's unusual configuration was created by a nearly head-on collision with a smaller galaxy about 200 million years ago.
To the core's left side there are comet-like knots of gas speeding through the heart of the galaxy at nearly 700,000 mph. They look blue in the false color image. The "heads" are a few hundred light-years across; the tails are more than 1,000 light-years long, the longest of which is nearly 5,000 light-years. The structures look like comets because they probably were spawned by a collision between high-speed and slower-moving material.
The radio map shows a bridge of neutral hydrogen, as "seen" with the VLA radio telescope in New Mexico.
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