The European Space Agency’s giant space telescope Herschel ran out of fuel last month and stopped working, as scientists had been expecting. But before then, the telescope was able to capture images of a rare cosmic event: the merger of two large, ancient galaxies into one super-sized galaxy. At first, astronomers thought that Herschel had accidentally captured two identical images of the same galaxy located 11 billion light years from Earth, but after performing follow-up studies on the data, they realized they were looking at two independent spiral galaxies — both the same shape as our own Milky Way galaxy — slowly but steadily fusing together across a bridge of gas. Eventually, scientists say that they will combine and change shape, becoming an elliptical galaxy.
via The Verge
