Hubble Telescope is the first major optical telescope, launched in April 1990 by NASA, that is placed in space, at the ultimate mountaintop. The telescope is placed at a very high altitude, far above rain clouds, where there is no distortion of atmosphere and light pollution. The placement enables the telescope to get an unobstructed view of the universe. Scientists use it to observe various distant stars, galaxies and planets.
The Hubble telescope, for the first time, has captured merging of two galaxies into one, at a distance of 230 million light-years from the Earth. The merging of these galaxies are taking place at the constellation of Hercules. The Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, which is placed with the Hubble Space telescope captured a stunning image of the galaxy NGC 6052. At the first glance of the image, scientists assumed it to be an abnormal shape galaxy but on further analysing it, they found that the image actually shows merging of two galaxies that will give birth to a third new galaxy.
As per NASA the merging is occurring due to the gravitational pull between the two separate galaxies. The pull was so high that they collided with each other and started merging to form a new galaxy. The process will take millions of years to complete. The two galaxies first have to stabilize to form a new galaxy. The child galaxy is supposed to be different from both the parent galaxies with its own size, shape and features. The abnormal shape that the image shows is because it is merging but a stable shape will be gained once the process is over. The new shape may not resemble the parent galaxy’s shapes. During the process stars will be thrown out of their original orbits into new paths. The galaxy now has a highly chaotic shape, visible due to the lights thrown by the stars.
free up a bit of space!