<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/718a14f7-a4e9-424a-bd89-0f9558d61671/A39A1558-1681-4D1A-A12C-D86B1AAE3CEF/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://tomsastroblog.com/?p=1144" href="http://tomsastroblog.com/?p=1144" style="font-size: 11px;">tomsastroblog.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://tomsastroblog.com/?p=1144"><div align="center"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/tomsastroblog.com/img/D8F73903-119E-4AFA-AC15-191AFBA0AFA5" alt="" /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://tomsastroblog.com/?p=1144"><P><STRONG><A class="liexternal" target="_blank" href="http://www.skyhound.com/sh/archive/jun/NGC_6240.html" fancytooltip="NGC 6240 info from Skyhound">NGC 6240</A></STRONG> is a galactic collision in progress. Astronomers used the 10 meter Keck II telescope and Adaptive Optics to really get a good look at the collision looking in the infrared.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://tomsastroblog.com/?p=1144"><P>Looking at the collision with Hubble and Chandra left unresolved questions, astronomers though there may be black holes in the center of the rotating disks of stars but they weren’t really quite sure where to put them. The image produced by Keck, seems to leave little doubt. You can see the locations of the black holes for yourselves in the image.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://tomsastroblog.com/?p=1144"><P>The galactic collision really is in progress, in a long term (to our thinking) ballet, eventually the two black holes will spiral together and merge into one very large black hole. The collision is taking place some 300 million light-years away and it will be 10’s to 100’s of millions of years before it’s over. To get a sense of scale on the image you will see the green vertical bar on the left; that bar represents roughly 1,600 light-years.</P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/A39A1558-1681-4D1A-A12C-D86B1AAE3CEF/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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