On Hubble's 32nd Birthday, NASA Releases Photos Of A Galaxy Group

The Hubble Space Telescope has never failed to wow us with the images it has captured. The space telescope run by American space agency NASA has spent 32 years so far discovering new galaxies and mesmerising moments of stars, planets, and other celestial bodies. Till now, the telescope has captured 1.5 million observations of almost 50,000 celestial objects, according to NASA.

On its 32nd birthday, the space agency has shared an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called 'The Hickson Compact Group 40'. The photo shows three spiral galaxies, one elliptical and one lenticular in the cluster. These galaxies somehow crossed paths in their evolution, resulting in an unusually packed and diverse galaxy sampler.

The entire group is so dense that it may fit into an area of space less than twice the width of our Milky Way's star disc, caught in a slow gravitational dance, NASA wrote in its Hubblesite.

It further explained that there's a lot of dark matter (an unknown and invisible form of matter) associated with these galaxies. If they come close together, then the dark matter can form a big cloud within which the galaxies are orbiting.

As the galaxies plow through the dark matter, they feel a resistive force due to its gravitational effects. This slows their motion and makes the galaxies lose energy, so they fall together, NASA further said.

The Hubble telescope has been broadcasting stunning pictures of space back to Earth for the past three decades. It's photographs and data have transformed and improved our knowledge of the universe.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a large, space-based observatory that has transformed astronomy since its launch and deployment by the space shuttle Discovery in 1990. It is named after the pioneering astronomer Edwin Hubble.

Hubble features a crystal-clear picture of the cosmos, far above clouds, light pollution, and atmospheric aberrations. Hubble has been used to observe some of the most distant stars and galaxies ever observed, as well as our solar system's planets.