ABSTRACT AST-9319596 Appleton & Struck-Marcell This project will concentrate on a rare but important class of colliding and merging galaxies, namely the colliding "ring" galaxies. The rings are thought to form from a head- on collision between two galaxies, one of which passed down the spin-axis of the other. These galaxies are ideal laboratories for exploring the effects of density-waves on the star formation properties of the host disk galaxy as well as providing information about the form of the potential in which the gas disk resides ***.
