NICMOS allowed astronomers to study high redshift galaxies. The instrument showed that the peculiar-shaped galaxies astronomers had seen in Hubble images were peculiar, and astronomers hadn’t seen just active star-forming regions. This implied that the “… bulk stellar mass in these galaxies was indeed out of equilibrium,” as the authors write.
We’re accustomed to gorgeous Hubble images of galaxies, but that’s not what makes up scientific data. This figure from the study shows some of the galaxy images in the data. On the left are some of the post-merger galaxies identified in the study, and on the right are star-forming galaxies. Each one is shown with its redshift and stellar mass. Image Credit: Conselice et al. 2022.. Many of these same authors have collaborated on earlier papers tackling the same problem.
The new study shows that galaxy mergers are one of the most dominant processes in galaxy evolution. Over the past 10 billion years, according to the study, the average massive galaxy has undergone three separate mergers, and those mergers more than doubled the mass of the original galaxy.
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