A new telescope image shows two galaxies that will collide in a million years - and predicts the eventual, similar fate of our Milky Way galaxy.

The Gemini North telescope, located atop Maunakea in Hawaii, spotted interacting spiral galaxies about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.

The galactic pair NGC 4567 and NGC 4568, also known as the Butterfly Galaxies, have just begun to collide as gravity pulls them together.

In 500 million years, the two cosmic systems will complete their merger to form a single elliptical galaxy,

CNN reports.

At this early stage, the two galactic centers are currently 20,000 light-years apart, and each galaxy has retained its pinwheel shape.

As galaxies become more entangled, gravitational forces will send on numerous intense star formation events.

The original structures of galaxies will change and distort.

Over time, they will dance around each other in ever-smaller circles.

This tightly bound dance will pull and stretch long streams of gas and stars, mixing the two galaxies together into something resembling a sphere.

Over millions of years, this galactic tangle will consume or disperse the gas and dust needed to trigger star birth, causing star formation to slow and eventually cease.

Observations of other galactic collisions and computer modeling have given astronomers more evidence that mergers of spiral galaxies create elliptical galaxies.

Once the pair merges, the resulting formation may look more like the elliptical galaxy Messier 89, also located in the constellation Virgo.

Once Messier 89 lost most of the gas needed to form stars, star birth occurred.

Now, the galaxy is home to the oldest stars and ancient clusters.

The afterglow of a supernova, first detected in 2020, is also visible in the new image as a bright spot in one of the spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 4568

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