Group Collision

Clusters of galaxies (collections of 100s to 1000s of galaxies orbiting within a single dark matter structure such as for example Coma), sometimes collide with another cluster - as happened with the bullet cluster. Such collisions also occur in EAGLE, and we can watch clusters and groups evolve over time, like this one.

The movie shows the formation history of this group, cycling between dark matter, gas, and stars, as in the “Small Cluster” example. You can see how the gas suddenly heats-up as the dark matter collapses, and a huge explosion emerging from the centre of the forming group. This occurs when the supermassive black holebecomes active.

The galaxies view shows just how violent the interactions between galaxies are, tearing stars out of galaxies and creating a halo of stars around the central object.

You can download individual movies by clicking them below.

You can download all of the movies in a zipped folder here.