An unusual merging pair is the star of this week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The constellation of Eridanus is 670 million light-years away from Earth.
The shape of the pair has been distorted due to their interaction. Hubble scientists write that the Arp- Madore catalog contains a collection of particularly peculiar galaxies spread throughout the southern sky and includes a collection of subtly interacting Galaxies.
When two or more galaxies are close together, their gravity starts to affect each other. One of them can be destroyed, or the other can be merged to form a larger universe. The outcome is thought to be related to the black holes that are at the heart of most of the universe.
The force of gravity can pull them out of their normal shapes when they are close to each other. In this case, the arms can be pulled into a new direction. There are two bright glowing cores around the black holes of the two galaxies that are involved in this merger.
The image was captured with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument, which operates in the visible light and ultraviolet wavelength, and which took some of Hubble's most famous images. This image was taken as part of a program to identify interesting objects that could be further studied with tools like the james wbb space telescope.
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