Close-up view of the surroundings of the interacting galaxy NGC 5291

This close-up pan video shows the spectacular aftermath of a 360 million year old cosmic collision, as revealed in great detail in an image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory. Among the debris surrounding the elliptical galaxy NGC 5291 is a rare and mysterious young dwarf galaxy. It is providing astronomers with an excellent opportunity to learn more about similar galaxies that are expected to be common in the early Universe, but are normally too faint and distant to be observed by current telescopes.