NASA’s latest discovery is a cosmic collision – literally.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a spiral galaxy that appears to have a distorted shape because it collided with another galaxy.
NASA uploaded the image of galaxy UGC 3912, which is a spiral galaxy, although admits it doesn’t look like it from the photo. Scientists believe the misshapen group of stars is typically down to an encounter with a fellow galaxy.
The space agency wrote in a statement: “UGC 3912’s distorted shape is typically indicative of a gravitational encounter with another galaxy. When galaxies interact – either brush up against each other’s gravitational fields or even collide – their stars, dust, and gas can be pulled into new paths.
“UGC 3912 might have once been an organized-looking spiral, but it looks like it’s been smudged out of shape by a giant thumb.”
When this happens, it isn’t exactly the end of the world for the stars and planets in orbit, though, fortunately. The objects inside the galaxies remain whole, but their orbits can change dramatically and affect the entire shape.
NASA continues: “That’s because the distances between stars in galaxies are so vast that they don’t crash into one another, just continue serenely along their new orbits.”
Astronomers are studying the UGC 3912 galaxy as part of a bigger project looking at supernovae activity, which the agency says, is when “stars at least eight times larger than our Sun explode at the end of their lives”.
The Hubble telescope is looking at various types of supernovae, specifically Type II, which exhibit a diverse range of brightness and spectroscopy which are not all understood.
The Hubble telescope has been in orbit for 33 years and carried out 1.5 million observations. Last week it released an image of a barred spiral galaxy (left) next to a lenticular galaxy (right) side-by-side. The photos revealed the pair, known as Arp 140, are located in the constellation Cetus.
The lenticular galaxies are between elliptical and spiral galaxies and look like a disk, made up of central bulges, primarily made up of old stars.
It comes after NASA released mind-blowing images from the James Webb Telescope of spiral galaxies from far away. Because it has a larger mirror and higher capacity, it can capture incredible photos that we’d never be able to see with the naked eye, including remarkable dust clouds and galaxy formations.
