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A new image of the venerable The Hubble Space Telescope shows what happens when two galaxies collide. This concerns the residents of the Milky Way because our own galaxy is expected to collide with the neighboring galaxy of Andromeda in about four billion years.
The image captures a scene at 230 million light years from Earth, in the constellation Hercules. (A light year is the distance traveled by the light over a year – about 6,000 billion kilometers). Here, Hubble zooms into the merging galaxies, a dual object called NGC 6052.
When NGC 6052 was cataloged for the first time in 1784 by William Herschel, it was classified in a single odd-shaped irregular galaxy. Now, however, we know that the form is strange because two galaxies come together.
Related: When galaxies meet: Photos of large galactic crashes
Scientists are studying mergers such as NGC 6052 to better understand the galactic evolution and to get an idea of what our collision will look like in a few billion years. Galactic fusions are very common in the universe. we know, for example, that Andromeda devoured a long time ago one of the brothers and sisters of the Milky Way. The collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda should pose no threat to the Earth, as the distances between individual stars in galaxies are very large, but scientists are still interested in the mechanics of these interactions.
"A long time ago, gravity brought the two galaxies closer together in the chaotic state we are now seeing," officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) wrote. description of the new photo. (Hubble is a joint mission of NASA and ESA.)
"The stars inside the two original galaxies are now following new trajectories caused by the new gravitational effects," they added. "However, real star collisions are very rare, because stars are very small in relation to the distances between them – most galaxies are empty spaces, and they will eventually merge into one stable galaxy."
Hubble was launched into Earth orbit in April 1990. The iconic telescope has received many visits from astronauts over the years to maintain or replace its components. At the last visit, in 2009, was installed the wide-field camera 3, which got the new image. Hubble also took an image of the NGC 6052 with an older instrument, Wide Field Camera 2; the scientists published this one in 2015.
Hubble is expected to continue to operate during the 2020s. Its successor, the $ 8.9 billion James Webb Space Telescope, should be launched in 2021.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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