Interacting Galaxies
RA 13h 20m 35.53s Dec 34° 8' 21.5"
Canes Venatici
300 million light-years (100 million parsecs)
January 10, 2002
34 minutes
F435W (B) and F814W (I)
NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans (U of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)
April 24, 2008
ABOUT THIS IMAGE:
IC 883 displays a very disturbed, complex central region with two tidal tails of approximately the same length emerging at nearly right angles: one diagonally to the top right of the frame and the other to the bottom right. The twin tidal tails suggest that IC 883 is the remnant of the merger of two gas-rich disk galaxies. The collision appears to have triggered a burst of star formation, indicated by a number of bright star clusters in the central region. IC 883 is 300 million light-years away toward the constellation of Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs. It is Number 193 in Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.
This
image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken
by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th
anniversary on 24th April 2008.