The subject of this poster is Superlong Tidal Tails. I define superlong as anything longer than 150,000 light years, which of course is longer than our galaxy.
I am fascinated by these long star streams, which are the longest I could find so far in the universe. For each object, the gravitational forces of at least 2 galaxies are at work. Like snowflakes, each tidal tail is different in their density, curvature, width. and subtle color. The longest streams are the most faint, as you might expect.
I only included objects where I could definitely see the whole stream. All of the objects in the poster happen to be Arp objects. I also looked at many other objects, but their streams were a bit shorter.
The objects are shown to scale and ordered by tidal tail length. For this exercise, I only measured the longest single uninterrupted tidal tail of each object. Some objects have dual opposing tails, which means that the overall star stream length of such objects is much longer than the stated length.
It is surprising to me that many of these galaxies are small in diameter, yet have created some of the longest star streams in the universe. Also, it is interesting that most of these galaxies are spiral galaxies.
If you would like to read more about any of these objects, each of the objects in the poster has previously been uploaded and described individually on Astrobin. They all reside in my Astrobin
Superlong Tidal Tails Collection.
If you would like to access all my DSO compilation posters, please click
here.
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