Space - Hubble fortsetter å levere - Space.com

 

Hubble telescope was at the perfect angle to capture this nearly impossible shot of two 'dancing galaxies'

By Stefanie Waldek published about 16 hours ago

You can see the galaxies warping in three dimensions.

 

Galaxy pair Arp 282, photographed by the HubbleSpace Telescope. 

(Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey, Department of Energy (DOE), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory/NoirLab/National Science Foundation/Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS); Acknowledgment: J. Schmidt)

Deep within the Andromeda constellation, some 320 million light-years away, two galaxies are consumed by a gravitationally bound dance, and the Hubble Space Telescope has just photographed the action in extraordinary three-dimensional detail.

The two dancers are the smaller polar-ring galaxy IC 1559 (top) and the larger spiral galaxy NGC 169 (bottom). Collectively, they are known as Arp 282, as designated in Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.

It's not unusual for galaxies to interact gravitationally. "Astronomers now accept that an important aspect of how galaxies evolve is the way they interact with one another," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "Galaxies can merge, collide, or brush past one another — each interaction significantly affecting their shapes and structures."