Interacting galaxies as a research area focuses on the dynamical, hydrodynamical, and radiative processes that occur when galaxies experience mutual gravitational influence, including fly-bys, minor and major mergers, and tidal encounters. Studies combine N-body and hydrodynamical simulations with multiwavelength observations to investigate tidal tails, bridges, bars, and induced starbursts, as well as gas inflows, feedback, and morphological transformation. This field is central to understanding hierarchical structure formation, the build-up of stellar mass, triggering and regulation of active galactic nuclei, and environmental effects on galaxy evolution across cosmic time, often using statistically defined samples from large surveys alongside detailed case studies.
Amina Helmi's passion for the Milky Way is clear as soon as one steps into her small office at the University of Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands.
Astronomy
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A team of astronomers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has observed an extremely rare "wandering" black hole located tens of thousands of light-years from the center of its galaxy. This finding could reshape ...
Astronomy
Jul 27, 2026
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Astronomers have discovered a remarkably tiny group of six young galaxies just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. This may be a rare glimpse of how some of the universe's largest galaxies formed. The paper outlining the ...
For decades, astronomers have cast galaxy mergers as the universe's ultimate relationship drama: two galaxies collide, chaos erupts, black holes awaken and star formation comes to a screeching halt. Upending this long-held ...
Astronomy
Jul 21, 2026
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The Milky Way may have undergone a dramatic change in orientation during its history, according to new research that helps explain a long-standing mystery about our galaxy. Using supercomputer simulations of galaxies like ...
Astronomy
Jul 21, 2026
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The galaxy Centaurus A is about 11 million light-years away and is the fifth-brightest galaxy in the sky. Because it's so bright, it's been studied extensively by amateur and professional astronomers alike. Also called NGC ...
Astronomy
Jul 7, 2026
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Scale in the universe is hard to understand from a purely human perspective. Many times, the math just doesn't sit well with our brains, which evolved to capture and process data about the world around us rather than grok ...
Astronomy
Jul 6, 2026
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Astronomers have uncovered new details about the black hole that ripped apart a star in a tidal disruption event named AT2024tvd. Findings suggest it is a wandering supermassive black hole—the kind that is not located at ...
This striking pair of galaxies located 80 million light-years from Earth lies in the constellation Leo against a backdrop of distant galaxies. The barred spiral galaxy NGC 3504 is seen on the right, and the spiral galaxy ...
Astronomy
Jun 25, 2026
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This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy cluster called CL0016+1609, or MACS J0018.5+1626, that is very bright at X-ray wavelengths and is one of the most extensively studied clusters at X-ray and radio wavelengths. ...
Astronomy
Jun 18, 2026
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