Although the James Webb Space Telescope will soon open up a whole new perspective for space exploration for us, the good old Hubble deserves credit. The very strong eye of humanity in the sky has been adamant in sending pictures of distant parts of space for the past three decades. And to mark his 32nd year of activity, a unique image was released.
The image shows five galaxies that will eventually collide. The galaxies are so close together (well in galactic terms) that it’s a wonder in itself.
This group of galaxies is called the Hickson Compact Group 40. These galaxies are unusually close.
These galaxies are in a collision course, in about a billion years, all five galaxies will collide to form an elliptical galaxy.
So what are the types of galaxies present in the picture?
We can see three spiral galaxies marked in orange, visible due to space dust. The one in the middle is an elliptical galaxy. The one in the lower right corner is a lenticular (lens-like) galaxy.
This galactic collection sits somewhere in the direction of the constellation Hydra.
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How big is this collection? Well, all five of these galaxies would fit into two Milky Way.
Scientists believe that dark matter plays a role in the merging of these galaxies. They believe that Dark Matter forms a cloud around the group and slows down individual galaxies.
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