NGC 1316: After Galaxies Collide

Astronomers turn detectives when looking out to decide out the clarification for startling sights esteem NGC 1316. Investigations suppose that NGC 1316 is a mammoth elliptical galaxy that started, about 100 million years ago, to indulge in a smaller spiral galaxy neighbor, NGC 1317, true on the upper true. Supporting proof contains the darkish mud lanes characteristic of a spiral galaxy, and faint swirls and shells of stars and gasoline visible on this wide and deep assert. One component that >remains unexplained is the unusually runt globular superstar clusters, viewed as faint dots on the assert. Most elliptical galaxies own more and brighter globular clusters than NGC 1316. Yet the observed globulars are too old-normal to had been created by the present spiral collision. One speculation is that these globulars dwell on from a truly most spirited earlier galaxy that became as soon as subsumed into NGC 1316. One other surprising attribute of NGC 1316, also assuredly called Fornax A, is its huge lobes of gasoline that glow brightly in radio waves.