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100 YEARS OF THE IAU

Interacting galaxies and mergers

Two landmark papers in the 1970s contributed strongly to establishing the importance of galaxy interactions and mergers in the formation and evolution of galaxies, using only gravity, and the ensuing dynamical friction.

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Fig. 1: NGC 7252, a transformed galaxy as end point of the ‘Toomre sequence’ of galaxies in different stages of merging.

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Correspondence to E. Athanassoula or Albert Bosma.

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Athanassoula, E., Bosma, A. Interacting galaxies and mergers. Nat Astron 3, 588–589 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0822-z

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