Many events are taking place in the depths of space, far away from us. One of the most striking events among these is the collision of galaxies. Two galaxies can collide to form a single galaxy. The debris from this collision gives birth to new stars. One such galaxy collision was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Hubble Space Telescope captures merging of galaxies
Some galaxies get closer and closer to each other, eventually colliding and gaining the appearance of a single galaxy. Two galaxies located 520 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion are a good example. This unusual event, called the multi-arm galaxy merger, was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
This merger was originally spotted by a team of volunteers. Invited to scan Hubble data and classify the different types of galaxies visible in the images, creating a catalog of galaxy types, the volunteer team was able to capture this iconic event.
The European Space Agency, on the other hand, used the following statements about the discovery of this legendary event by the team of volunteers:
The Galaxy Zoo project was born when an astronomer was given an incredibly mind-numbing task. The European Space Agency classifies more than 900,000 galaxies visually. By creating a web interface and inviting citizen scientists to contribute to this challenge, the Galaxy Zoo team was able to crowdsource the analysis, and within six months, a legion of 100,000 volunteer citizen astronomers contributed to the classification of more than 40 million galaxies.
Volunteers who have participated in this project since it started in 2007 have witnessed different space events such as supernova as well as galaxy mergers. In addition, the team contributed to more than 100 scientific journal articles and also guided other people who are interested in space.
The merging of galaxies, viewed by the Advanced Camera for Surveys tool on Hubble, looks pretty impressive. The merger, millions of light-years from our planet, makes for wonderful images.
So what do you think about the colliding and merging of galaxies? You can share your views with us in the comments section.
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