The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the stunning image of three galaxies merging into a swirling cosmic union. The merger event, called IC 2431, is located about 6181 million light-years away.
molten galaxies
This is new evidence that galaxy mergers are a fairly common event in the universe, the type of event that has also affected the Milky Way on several occasions, as astronomers have discovered in the past. In fact, our galaxy also “acquired” several other “small” galaxies billions of years ago. These events are important because they are the basis for the structural formation of galaxies we see today.
Three compact galaxies
In the image captured by the Hubble telescope, a cloud of dust obscures the central part, even if the three galaxies participating in the merger are clearly visible. Acquired using the Advanced Camera for Reconnaissance, a special instrument installed on the space telescope on March 7, 2002. It replaced the Faint Object Camera (FOC).
Galaxy Zoo Science Project
The acquisition was made as part of the Galaxy Zoo science project, which was carried out primarily by citizen scientists. After identifying the most unusual galaxies in the telescope’s massive data sets, NASA scientists pointed the telescope at them and produced the stunning image shown above.
Projects carried out by non-professional astronomers
Astronomical projects carried out with the help of unprofessional scientists and astronomers are essential: often the data sets collected by space telescopes such as Hubble are enormous, and classifying all objects, such as hundreds of thousands of galaxies, will be difficult. task without the help of volunteers. According to the statement from NASA, for example, the results of the Galaxy Zoo project were achieved in just 175 days. If such surveys had been conducted by professional astronomers, they would have required years of work. This same project notably led to the discovery of several hitherto unknown types of galaxies, as well as many other galaxy mergers.
