My nomination for today's #SuperbOwl.
The Cosmic Owl is two galaxies that crashed into each other, creating overlapping ring-shaped splashes of stars. It measures 150,000 light years from side to side, or about 10^20 times the size of a Great Grey Owl on Earth.
arxiv.org/abs/2506.10058 #space #science #nature #sports
The Cosmic Owl: Twin Active Collisional Ring Galaxies with Starburst Merging Front at $z=1.14$
Galaxy mergers play a critical role in driving galaxy evolution, especially by transforming galaxy morphology, redistributing the gas around galaxies, triggering AGN activity and star formation. We present the Cosmic Owl, a galaxy merger at $z=1.arXiv.org
