NASA / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope is still chugging along, despite the JWST being hard at work, and it captured an unusual galaxy merger. Named ‘Arp-Madore 417-391’, this collection of galaxies are spread throughout the southern sky, and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies as well as more incredible colliding galaxies.
It’s located approximately 670 million light-years from Eearth in the constellation Eridanus in the southern celestial hemisphere. These two galaxies were distorted by gravity and then twisted into a massive ring, moving their cores next to each other. The image was observed with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which is optimized to hunt for galaxies and galaxy clusters in the ancient universe
This image comes from a selection of Hubble observations designed to create a list of intriguing targets for follow-up observations with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, as well as other ground-based telescopes. Astronomers chose a list of previously unobserved galaxies for Hubble to inspect between other scheduled observations,” said NASA.
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