You can ring in the new year with some celestial fireworks, courtesy of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope.
Hubble has taken a colorful photo of the galaxy NGC 6052, which lies about 230 million light-years away in the constellation Hercules — and is actually not a single galaxy at all.
“It would be reasonable to think of this as a single abnormal galaxy, and it was originally classified as such,” European Space Agency (ESA) officials wrote in a description of the image, which was released on Dec. 28. (Hubble is a joint mission involving NASA and ESA.)
“However, it is in fact a ‘new’ galaxy in the process of forming,” ESA officials added. “Two separate galaxies have been gradually drawn together, attracted by gravity, and have collided. We now see them merging into a single structure.” Read more…
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