ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

NGC 7252

So, there's this thing called NGC 7252. It's kind of like a huge city in space, made up of stars, gas, and dust. It's very far away from us, so we can't see it with our eyes.

Scientists have used special telescopes to study NGC 7252 and they've found out some cool things about it. They believe it used to be two different galaxies that collided with each other a very long time ago. When that happened, the stars, gas, and dust all mixed together and started swirling around each other.

Over time, some parts of NGC 7252 got pulled together by gravity and formed new stars. Other parts got flung out into space. Now, NGC 7252 looks like it has a lot of arms and spikes and it's really colorful. It keeps changing as the stars and gas and dust keep moving around.

Even though NGC 7252 is really far away and we can't visit it like we do with cities on Earth, scientists still learn a lot from studying it. They can learn more about how galaxies form and evolve over time. It's a pretty cool thing to learn about!