Hubble Space Telescope Killer Images of Wild's Triplets
Galaxies: Wild's Triplet from Hubble
With all the fuss over amazing images from the new Webb Space Telescope, the team of astronomers at the Hubble Space Telescope deserve some attention, too.
This is “WILD’S TRIPLET.” Two of these three galaxies are close enough to each other that their gravity is drawing material including space dust, luminous gas, asteroids, comets, planets and even stars from each other. This material creates a “bridge” between them. Astronomers call it a gravitational tail.
What a great setting for a science fiction story in which civilizations could travel between galaxies, perhaps hopping from one star to the next along the bridge.
This is the NASA website address for a much larger copy with more detail:
Galaxy pairs like these in a close gravity embrace are on an inevitable collision course. The will orbit each other, drawing closer and closer until they merge. More accurately, they will pass through each other like two swarms of bees flying into each other. In reality, the actual distances between solid objects like stars in a galaxy is astonishingly large. Actual collisions will be limited. However all that gravity in motion will shred the nice symmetry that creates attractive spiral galaxies. After a very long dance, the final result will be an anomalously shaped blob.
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Webmaster’s note… check that link out every day for glorious images like this one:
