NASA and ESA’s famous Hubble Space Telescope has immortalized the turbulent merger of three galaxies in the constellation Cancer, 681 million light-years from Earth: tangled between dust clusters and swirls of bright stars, rising into a daughter galaxy that will bear the scars of this collision. Cosmic.
The image was obtained by pointing the powerful Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys (Acs) at some exotic galaxies identified thanks to the “Galaxy Zoo” citizen science project, the largest galactic census ever examined (up to 900,000) carried out by more than 100,000 .volunteers. Thanks to their dedication, in 175 days, the results that required years of work for an astronomer were obtained.
Among the most exciting cosmic objects identified was IC 2431, which turned out to be a group of three colliding galaxies. In the image taken by Hubble, we see a violent mixing of stars in the formation and distortions due to the gravitational interactions that occur in the “trio”. In the center there is also a thick cloud of dust, while the galaxy’s light appears in the background at its ends.
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