Black holes and star formation
Thursday, February 9, 2012 - 09:01
in Astronomy & Space
(PhysOrg.com) -- It has long been recognized that galaxy mergers or even close interactions can play a vital role in shaping the morphology of galaxies. One way they can do so, it is thought, is by triggering bursts of star formation. But exactly how a collision produces new stars is not clear: sometimes star formation activity is seen all across an interacting galaxy, but in other cases it is localized to a region around the galactic nucleus.