The Hubble Space Telescope, which has been traveling in space for more than thirty years and recording dozens of images, has added a new one to NASA’s collection. New images added to the Southern Bizarre Galaxies Arp-Madore Catalog reveal the merging moment of two galaxies 670 million light-years away.
This is how the Hubble Space Telescope recorded two galaxies
The images published by NASA had a great impact both in the scientific world and on social media. The photograph, showing the constellation Eridanus about 670 million light-years away, recorded a galactic binary known as Arp-Madore 417-391.
The telescope had previously taken similar photos in 2019. It had revealed another galactic merger occurring at a distance of about 704 million light-years from Earth. In the last photo, Hubble detected another galaxy pair distorting each other’s shapes.
The final images were captured with the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which was specially designed by the European Space Agency (ESA) to search for galaxies. On the subject, ESA said, “The two galaxies collided with each other by gravity.”
It is extremely rare for ring-like structures to form during the merger of two galaxies. According to NASA, the rings form temporarily and can last up to 100 million years. The stars then gradually pull back into their galaxies and merge after 1 to 2 billion years.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured some images that went viral on social media in a short time. Photos shared by NASA include the galactic trio Arp 248, also known as the “Wild Triple”.
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