Unless you have access to a giant telescope, it’s rare to see the cosmos in its full splendor. Thanks to The Very Large Telescope in Chile, “Peter Pan’s littlest friend was spotted in the skies by the European Southern Observatory, and she is actually a combination of three galaxies – two spirals and a third uncommon ‘irregular’ galaxy.” Continue reading for a video showing what will happen when Andromedia and our Milky Way, collide, along with more information on this triple merger.
While this will cause massive changes to orbits within the galaxies, most star systems will remain intact, with each galaxy having so much empty space between stars that the galaxies will ‘pass through’ each other, before merging into one galaxy over millions, if not billions, of years.
While eventually this will be one galaxy, it will be many many years before our view, from Earth, changes from anything other than Neverland’s most famous fairy. Astronomer Petri Vaisanen said: ‘Examples of mergers of three galaxies of roughly similar sizes are rare.
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