SDSSCGB 10189

SDSSCGB 10189 is a trio of interacting galaxies that is located in the constellation of Boötes. They are located 1.04 billion light-years away from the Solar System and are gravitationally interacting.

Characteristics
The three galaxies involved in the interaction, are PGC 84569 or known as SBS 1520+503 and IRAS 15205+5021, 2MASX J15220246+5010185 or PGC 3845255 and SDSS J152202.25+501027.9 or PGC 4530597. All of them have distorted appearances with strands of dust and gas running between them. It is also likely that their interactions cause periods of extreme star formation thus making it into an luminous infrared galaxy. SDSSCGB 10189 is set on a collision course, in which the result will be a single larger galaxy.

This trio is an exceptionally rare combination in the close proximity of each of the galaxies to one another: they are lying only 50,000 light-years apart from one another to the point they are considered close galactic neighbors. To the left of the interacting trio, a foreground dimmer spiral galaxy called PGC 2365567 is located which appears to float serenely along the collision.

This observation was conducted to help astronomers understand the origin of massive galaxies. They are called brightest cluster galaxies and suspected they can be formed through merging of large gas-rich galaxies. By looking at SDSSCGB 10189, it shows how galaxies undergo changes through merging and transform over time from disk galaxies to spheroids.