In a new paper led by Daizhong Liu (Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics), observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) were combined to study the motion of gas within PJ0116-24. ALMA traces cold gas, seen here in blue, whereas the VLT, with its new Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS), traces warm gas, shown in red. Thanks to these detailed observations, the team discovered that the gas in this extreme galaxy was rotating in an organized fashion rather than in the chaotic way expected after a galactic collision – a surprising result! This shows convincingly that mergers aren’t always needed for a galaxy to become a HyLIRG. Read more in the ALMA press release.
Image: © D. Liu et al.; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/ESO/