HUBBLE TAKES A FANTASTIC PHOTO OF THREE GALAXIES MERGING 681 MILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY


According to the European Space Agency, the Hubble Space Telescope has taken an image of the galaxy merger IC 2431, which is occurring about 618 million light years distant from Earth in the constellation Cancer (ESA). The gravitational interactions of these three galaxies result in a mix of star creation and tidal distortions, as shown in this image.

Despite the fact that galaxies are merging, there will be very few instances of celestial bodies colliding because they are so far apart. NASA utilises the metaphor of grains of sand separated by the length of football fields in some of its educational materials to help students appreciate the immense scale of the distance between celestial bodies. When galaxies merge, they lose their original shape and take on a new one, which is usually elliptical.

However, the dense cloud of dust that obscures the image's centre shows another event that occurs when galaxies merge: galaxies' clouds of gas and dust collide, occasionally leading in the birth of new stars.

This image is part of the Galaxy Zoo citizen science initiative, which studies "strange and wonderful" galaxies based on Hubble data, according to ESA.

It enlisted the help of over 100,000 individuals to classify 900,000 previously unstudied galaxies. According to ESA, the initiative accomplished in 175 days what a professional astronomer would have taken years to accomplish.

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