Hubble captures ‘monster merger’ of two galaxies. Is this the future of Milky Way?

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency (ESA) announced that the Hubble Space Telescope released an image of a "monster merger" of two galaxies.

The image features Arp 122, which is a peculiar galaxy that in fact comprises two galaxies – NGC 6040, the tilted, warped spiral galaxy and LEDA 59642, the round, face-on spiral.

What's interesting is that NASA has said that both galaxies are in the midst of a collision — similar to the Andromeda–Milky Way prediction, which is said to occur in about 4.5 billion years.

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This prediction is expected between the two largest galaxies in the Local Group—the Milky Way, which contains the Solar System and Earth, and the Andromeda Galaxy.

Notably, the galactic collisions and mergers are a slow process and would take hundreds of millions of years to unfold.

NASA's report mentioned that the dramatic cosmic encounter is located roughly 570 million light-years from Earth, which is a very safe distance.

It added that at the lower-left corner is the elliptical galaxy NGC 6041, which is a central member of the galaxy cluster that Arp 122 resides in, but otherwise not participating in the merger.

The announcement read: "Galaxies are composed of stars and their solar systems, dust, gas, and invisible dark matter. In galactic collisions, therefore, these constituent components may experience enormous changes in the gravitational forces acting on them."

It added, "In time, this completely changes the structure of the two (or more) colliding galaxies, and sometimes ultimately results in a single, merged galaxy. That may well be what results from the collision pictured in this image."

Galaxies formed by mergers are considered to have a regular or elliptical structure, as the merging process disturbs more complicated structures. NASA said in its post: "It would be fascinating to know what Arp 122 will look like once this collision is complete… but that will not happen for a long, long time."