Arp 122 is located around 570 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hercules and in this Hubble Space Telescope image, we can see that it’s actually comprised of two merging spiral galaxies. You can see one of them (LEDA 59642) face-on and is circular in shape, while the other (NGC 6040) appears to be nestled in front of the first.
This galaxy in front looks like a disc being tilted away from you, partially warped, and in the lower-left corner, there’s a large elliptical galaxy appearing as light radiating from a point. Our own Milky Way is on a collision course with its nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), but that event still has around four billion years to go before it actually happens.
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Galaxies are composed of stars and their solar systems, dust and gas. In galactic collisions, therefore, these constituent components may experience enormous changes in the gravitational forces acting on them. In time, this completely changes the structure of the two (or more) colliding galaxies, and sometimes ultimately results in a single, merged galaxy,” said NASA.
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