NASA Hubble Image Shows 3 Galaxies Merging Into 1! How Did the Space Telescope Capture It?

In what could be said as one of the most interesting space stories recently, a NASA Hubble image showed three galaxies merging into one.

The celestial event portrays what might happen when galaxies collide and merge.

NASA Hubble Image Shows 3 Galaxies Merging Into 1

The NASA Hubble Twitter account shared an image of a triple galaxy merger known as IC 2431. It is located 681-million light-years away from Earth in the constellation cancer.

The said Twitter post has already accumulated more than 2,700 likes and above 400 retweets at the time of writing.

The image from the NASA Hubble Space Telescope clearly shows what might happen when galaxies collide and merge.

Aside from this, NASA explained in their blog post that this occurrence also shows the "tumultuous mixture of star formation and tidal distortions caused by the gravitational interactions of this galactic trio."

The space agency explained that a thick cloud of dust conceals the center of the image, but the light from a galaxy behind is piercing its outer extremities.

For those curious to know how it was discovered, Digital Trends explained that the NASA Hubble image was investigated through the Galaxy Zoo project, which is one of the earliest and biggest citizen science projects in astronomy.

The Galaxy Zoo Project

The Galaxy Zoo project was established in 2007. Since then, it has brought together members of the public to assist in locating and categorizing galaxies, mergers and supernovas.

NASA added that the original Galaxy Zoo project was the world's biggest galaxy census, relying on more than 100,000 volunteers to categorize 900,000 unstudied galaxies, per Digital Trends.

The latest initiative completed what would have taken professional astronomer years to complete in only 175 days, and it has sparked a continuous stream of similar astronomical citizen research projects.

Other Galaxy Zoo efforts included the most comprehensive studies of galaxy mergers and tidal dwarf galaxies yet undertaken, as well as the finding of wholly new forms of compact star-forming galaxies.

According to the Galaxy Zoo project website, "one of the unique aspects of Galaxy Zoo over automated morphological measurements is the possibility of serendipitous discoveries (often aided by volunteer led discussion on the Galaxy Zoo Forum)."

They also shared some of their discoveries throughout the years, including the so called "green peas" which are a class of "extremely star-forming galaxies." They also discovered the popular "Hanny's Voorwerp" and studied similar AGN-ionised gas clouds.

The existence of a large sample of galaxies with both color and morphological data has led to the significant realization that color, not morphology, is the most strongly connected with the environment. This provided result in fascinating subclasses of galaxies such as red spiral galaxies and blue ellipticals.

With regards to their technique, they stated that their process is based on the surprising fact that a galaxy's form may reveal a lot about it.

For instance, they explained people must locate spiral arms, and from there, they will be able to know that they are gazing at a revolving disk of stars, dust, and gas with plenty of fuel for future star formation. Despite this, they explained that this isn't always the case.