Movie: N-body simulation of The Mice by J. Barnes

A close encounter between two identical disk galaxies produces a configuration resembling The Mice (see the publications of J. Barnes). 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. The best match to NGC 4676, shown at left, occurs about one time unit after pericenter.

Credit: J. E. Barnes, IfA, Hawaii

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/research/interaction_models/mice/index.html#modeling