Optical image of `The Mice', NGC 4676. North is right, east is
up. Image courtesy John Hibbard.
MPEG
movie (448 kb)
Simulation of The Mice. A close encounter between two identical
disk galaxies produces a configuration resembling The Mice (Hibbard &
Barnes, in preparation). Here the encounter is seen from our viewpoint,
almost edge-on to the orbital plane. The numbers at upper right show elapsed
time in units of about 160 million years. Pericenter occurs at time 1.0;
the best match to NGC 4676, shown above, is attained about one time unit
later.
MPEG
movie (368 kb)
Rotation about NS axis. The three-dimensional structure of this model, at the time best matching the observations, is revealed by rotation about the north-south axis. As the view above shows, the northern tail appears straight because we view it almost edge-on.