Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
During the last 19 years the Hubble Space Telescope has taken dozens of fantastic images, such as this one showing galaxies having a ‘close encounter’. The blue streamer between the two galaxies is a spiral arm of newborn blue stars. This happens when two galaxies interact and gravitationally tug at each other.
The nuclei of both colliding galaxies can be seen in the process of merging. In the image the blue bridge looks like it’s connecting to a third galaxy. This galaxy is actually in the background and does not connect at all. Due to Hubbles fantastic optics astronomers are able to sort out which objects are foreground and background.
This image was issued to celebrate the 19th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Over the last 19 years Hubble has taken 570,000 images of 29,000 celestial objects and more than 880,000 observations.
Tags: Galaxies, Hubble Space Telescope
