<Previous | Gallery | Next>

The TADPOLE GALAXY (also known as UGC 10214) is located some 420 million light years away toward the constellation Draco.and is a spiral galaxy that has been violently disrupted by a collision with a smaller companion galaxy, which is visible as the compact, blue object in the upper left corner of the much more massive Tadpole galaxy.

The cosmic Tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation Draco. Strong gravitational forces from the interaction between two galaxies created the long tail of debris, which is made up of stars and gas that stretch out more than 280,000 light years and feature massive, bright blue star clusters, which are visible in the spiral arms of the galaxy and in the tidal debris tail. The galaxy is backdropped by thousands of faint background galaxies.

One story goes that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from left to right in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction. During the close encounter, tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy itself, estimated to lie about 300 thousand light-years behind the Tadpole, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper left. Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy.

 

Photographs and astronomical descriptions courtesy of NASA and AURA/STScI

Tales of the Immortal Night ©2003, J.J. Kuhl

Website designed by Business eSolutions Contact them at info@business-esolutions.com