Atoms-for-Peace
Atoms-for-Peace is the curious name given to a pair of interacting and merging galaxies that lie around 220 million light years away in the constellation of Aquarius. It is also known as NGC 7252 and Arp 226 and is just bright enough to be seen by amateur astronomers as a very faint small fuzzy blob shining around 12,2 mag.
Colliding galaxies are common during galaxy evolution.The extremely tenuous distribution of matter in galaxies means these are not collisions in the traditional sense of the word, but rather gravitational interactions. Galactic collisions are now frequently simulated on computers, which use realistic physics principles, including the simulation of gravitational forces, gas dissipation phenomena, star formation, and feedback. Dynamical friction slows the relative motion galaxy pairs, which may possibly merge at some point, according to the initial relative energy of the orbits.
This picture of Atoms-for-Peace galaxy produced by the European Southern Observatory represents a snapshot of its collision, with the chaos in full flow, set against a rich backdrop of distant galaxies. The results of the intricate interplay of gravitational interactions is visible in the shapes of the tails made from streams of stars, gas, and dust. The image also shows the incredible shells that formed as gas and stars were ripped out of the colliding galaxies and wrapped around their joint core. While much material was ejected into space, other regions were compressed, sparking bursts of star formation. The result was the formation of hundreds of young star clusters, around 50 to 500 million years old, which we speculate are the progenitors of globular clusters.
The object’s curious nickname has an interesting history.In December 1953, USA President Eisenhower gave a speech that was dubbed Atoms for Peace. The theme was promoting nuclear power for peaceful purposes a particularly hot topic at the time. This speech and the associated conference made waves in the scientific community and beyond to such an extent that NGC 7252 was named the Atoms-for-Peace galaxy. In many ways, the curious shape that we can see is the result of two galaxies merging to produce something new and grand, a little like what occurs in nuclear fusion. Furthermore, the giant loops resemble a textbook diagram of electrons orbiting an atomic nucleus.
Phedias Hadjicharalambous
Cyprus Astronomy Organisation
