Schweizer has proposed that NGC 7252 (Arp 226) recently formed from the merger of two disk galaxies and will ultimately relax into an elliptical galaxy. We have successfully simulated the suspected collision event with a gravitational interaction code, thereby reinforcing the merger hypothesis for the origin of this object. A careful selection of the disk and orbital model parameters lead to a good match to the present appearance and dynamics of this galaxy. Our best simulation relaxes into an object which morphologically and kinematically resembles a normal elliptical galaxy.
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Borne et al. (1991) studied this question.