A violent clash of galaxies has been caught in unprecedented detail by one of the most powerful telescopes based in La Palma, Spain.
The collision was triggered by a rogue galaxy, hurtling through space at an incredibly high speed of 2 million miles per hour (3.2 million kilometers per hour).
This cosmic speedster collided with Stephan's Quintet, a group of five galaxies located 290 million light-years away.
The impact triggered a colossal shockwave, ripping through the galactic gas and dust. It's like a sonic boom from a jet fighter, but on a cosmic scale.
"As the shock moves through pockets of cold gas, it travels at hypersonic speeds - several times the speed of sound in the intergalactic medium of Stephan's Quintet* - powerful enough to rip apart electrons from atoms, leaving behind a glowing trail of charged gas," said Marina Arnaudova, the lead researcher from the University of Hertfordshire.
Stephan's Quintet is a visual spectacle of galactic interaction.
"Since its discovery in 1877, Stephan's Quintet has captivated astronomers, because it represents a galactic crossroad where past collisions between galaxies have left behind a complex field of debris," Arnaudova added.
This galaxy group has been further energized by the recent passage of NGC 7318b, a galaxy that has barreled through the group at an astonishing speed.
This violent cosmic event was captured by the William Herschel Telescope's Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer (WEAVE) in Spain.
As NGC 7318b hurtles through the cluster, it triggers a shockwave that ripples through the intergalactic medium.
The team has made a surprising discovery about the shockwave created by the colliding galaxies. They found that the shockwave behaves differently depending on the environment it encounters.
When the shockwave moves through cold gas, it acts like a powerful force, stripping electrons from atoms and creating a trail of ionized gas. However, as it enters regions of hot gas, the shockwave loses much of its energy.
"Instead of causing significant disruption, the weak shock compresses the hot gas, resulting in radio waves that are picked up by radio telescopes like the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR)," said Soumyadeep Das, a PhD student at the University of Hertfordshire in the press release.
This dual nature of the shockwave was previously unknown to astronomers. This revelation was made possible by the combined power of WEAVE, LOFAR, the Very Large Array (VLA), and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
"The details of the shock and the unfolding collision that we see in Stephan's Quintet, these observations provide a remarkable perspective on what may be happening in the formation and evolution of the barely resolved faint galaxies that we see at the limits of our current capabilities," said Gavin Dalton, WEAVE principal investigator at RAL Space and the University of Oxford.
A team of 60+ astronomers discovered this spectacular event of NGC 7318b smashing into Stephan's Quintet.
The findings have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.