Hubble Space Telescope Image Shows Merging Galaxies 671 Million Light-Years Away

The Hubble Telescope, which has served as humankind's eye in space, has captured stunning images over the decades. This time, the powerful machine clicked the photo of unusual galaxy merger in the ancient universe. Hubble is a joint project of the American space agency NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The scientists released the latest image captured by the telescope on Friday showcasing a pair of merging galaxies.  

The galaxy merger, known as Arp-Madore 417-391, is located 671 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. It shows two galaxies distorted by gravity and twisted together into a ring.   Elaborating more, NASA said that the Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of particularly peculiar galaxies spread throughout the southern sky, and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies as well as more spectacular colliding galaxies. 

Sharing the image on Twitter, the official handle of Hubble wrote, ''Merge ahead. This #HubbleFriday image showcases the peculiar galaxy merger known as Arp-Madore 417-391.At 671 million light-years away, this merger is the result of two galaxies that were distorted by gravity and twisted together into a ring.'' 

See the image here 

Merge ahead ⚠️

This #HubbleFriday image showcases the peculiar galaxy merger known as Arp-Madore 417-391.

At 671 million light-years away, this merger is the result of two galaxies that were distorted by gravity and twisted together into a ring: https://t.co/Y5mWGbAAb8 pic.twitter.com/N87m2etW82

— Hubble (@NASAHubble) November 25, 2022

Notably, the telescope used its Advanced Camera for Surveys to snap this scene and the ESA said that the instrument is optimized to hunt for galaxies and galaxy clusters in the ancient universe. 

"Hubble's ACS has been contributing to scientific discovery for 20 years, and throughout its lifetime it has been involved in everything from mapping the distribution of dark matter to studying the evolution of galaxy clusters," the ESA said. 

Earlier in October, the Hubble team released a stunning image of two interacting galaxies collectively known as Arp-Madore 608-333. The image was captured as part of a campaign to catalogue interesting objects for follow-up studies by other ground-based observatories, as well as Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope. 

Astronomers chose a list of previously unobserved galaxies for Hubble to inspect. Over time, this lets astronomers build up a menagerie of interesting galaxies while using Hubble's limited observing time as efficiently as possible, said NASA.