No, these aren’t the eyes of a giant celestial being. These are a pair of galaxies which are locked in a deadly dance on a cosmic collision course.
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00:00No, these aren't the eyes of a giant celestial being.
00:07These are a pair of galaxies, which are on a cosmic collision course.
00:11They are named NGC 2207 and IC 2163, and they were recently photographed by a joint venture
00:17between the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes.
00:20They reside some 80 million light years away, and NASA has caught them in the final dervish
00:25of their galactic merging dance.
00:27When galaxies collide, they don't just go boom, rather they orbit and swing around one
00:31another for often millions of years.
00:33During that time, they spiral, and the contents of each begin to intertwine as they siphon
00:37material away from one another.
00:39According to NASA, this galactic pair has already swung around one another once millions
00:43of years ago, and now they're doing it again.
00:46However, these galaxies are also still doing their thing, that is to say they're still
00:49forming baby stars, dozens of them each, every year.
00:53However, because of the tumultuous conditions within the galaxies, caused by the stretching
00:57and compressing of material due to this death dance, those stars have a short lifespan,
01:01exploding in massive supernovae, events that cause a chain reaction of more star formation
01:07and destruction.