The pair of tangled galaxies belong to a larger group known as the Coma galaxy cluster. Many galaxies in this cluster have undergone similar processes of merging with larger companions.
This artist's impression of the 'quenching' process shows how a normal blue (star-forming) galaxy lost its gas while falling into the Coma Cluster very early on in its formation. Disclaimer ...
Caption This Hubble Space Telescope mosaic shows a portion of the immense Coma galaxy cluster -- containing more than 1,000 galaxies -- located 300 million light-years away. The rapid motion of ...