ANTENNAE FACTS
The home of interesting Antennae galaxy facts for kids and adults.
Antennae Facts
The Antennae is a pair of spiral galaxies, interacting with one another. Their particular galactic duet began over a few hundred million years ago, and in a few billion years more the two galaxies will have come together completely.
When the two Antennae galaxies merge, they will have a single supermassive black hole at the core of the merged galaxy.
For more interesting facts about the Antennae pair of galaxies, read on as we have 10 more for you.๏ปฟ
10 Facts about Antennae
1. Galaxy mergers are a special but destructive event.
Spiral galaxies that come together into a single galaxy, as the Antennae pair doing, will almost certainly end up as elliptical type galaxies. This is because as they merge, and their various stars and planets collide, all traces of the spiral arms are erased.
Did you know?
Studies and simulations have shown that large galaxies collide with each other, on average, just once every 9 billion years. Dwarf and massive galaxy collisions happen around three times more often.
2. The Milky Way and Andromeda will at some point look like Antennae.
It is thought that when the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies eventually combine, they will have an appearance of the Antennae galaxies as they looked during at least one of their interactions.
Did you know?
Scientists predict that in around 3.75 billion years, the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will collide and merge to form a single giant elliptical galaxy.
3. The Antennae merger will not be a whimper but a bang – over time
Millions of new stars will be created during the merger of the Antennae galaxies. Of these, only around 10% will live beyond 10 million years old. This is because the majority will be what is called massive blue supergiants. This type of star uses their nuclear fuel quickly then explode as a supernova.
Did you know?
A supernova is a star that rapidly increases massively in brightness due to a catastrophic explosion that ejects most of its mass.
4. The remaining 10% of surviving stars have an important role
The massive young star clusters that survive and do not turn supernova during the starburst activity after the merger, will eventually become the globular clusters of the newly formed single galaxy.
Did you know?
The Antennae pair of galaxies are the closest merging galaxies to us in the Milky Way.
5. The Antennae is a British discovery.
The British astronomer William Herschel first discovered the two colliding galaxies of Antennae in 1785. 4 years before this, he discovered that the planet Uranus was not a star as previously thought.
Did you know?
Herschel constructed over 400 telescopes, but he is remembered most for the one that was forty feet long and made of iron. A 10-foot section of the telescope still lives at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
6. Antennae is in the Virgo cluster
The two galaxies of the Antennae can be found within the Virgo Cluster, and are roughly around 45 million light-years away from Earth – this is the revised figure when the Hubble Space Telescope recorded that the previously thought distance of 65 million light-years was incorrect.
Did you know?
The Virgo Cluster of galaxies is the closest one to the Milky Way, our home, with over 1,000 known galaxy members.
7. It’s all in a name
The name 'Antennae Galaxies' came about because between them the galaxies have two arms, and they are very long and resemble antennae. These two arms reach far out from the centres of the galaxies and are best observed from ground-based telescopes.
Did you know?
The arms, or Antennae, were created between 200 and 300 million years ago when the galaxies first collided.
8. There have been several Supernova recorded.
There have so far been five observed stars that ended up exploding and turning supernova in the Antennae galaxies. These stars are designated: SN2004GT, SN2007sr, SN2013dk, SN1921A and SN1974E.
Did you know?
The last reliably observed supernova in the Milky Way was in 1604 and was recorded by many astronomers around the world, including Johannes Kepler.
9. The Antennae is one of the youngest examples.
The twin Antennae galaxies are believed to be among the youngest and closest to us, examples of a set of galaxies that are coming together. Around half of the objects that we can see in the Antennae pair of galaxies are young clusters that are home to thousands of stars.
Did you know?
When the two black holes of the Antennae collide they will release massive amounts of gravitational waves. It is these waves that will be responsible for the loss of orbital energy of the two black holes, which will end up in the two coming together to form a supermassive black hole.
10. Star clusters will survive after the merger of the two galaxies.
It is believed that after the merger of the two galaxies, around a hundred of the most massive star clusters will survive to form regular globular clusters. After this event, they will look similar in appearance to the globular clusters found in our own Milky Way galaxy.
Did you know?
There are 157 globular clusters in the Milky Way.
