Watching the death of a distant galaxy

Annagrazia Puglisi

doi:10.25250/thescbr.brk630

Watching the death of a distant galaxy

Authors

Annagrazia Puglisi Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, Durham University, Durham, UK

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25250/thescbr.brk630

Keywords:

galaxies, galaxy evolution, galaxy mergers, starbursts

Abstract

Galaxies’ gas is the fuel to form new stars. The formation process stops when galaxies run out of fuel. However, the mechanisms that cause a galaxy to run out of gas are not yet clear. We discovered that a collision between two galaxies is causing one of the two to eject a large fraction of its gas, and it will quickly stop forming new stars.