This Hubble reflection image shows a pair of pumpkin-like galaxies — labeled NGC 2292 and NGC 2293 — located 120 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. The newly formed stellar arm embraces the interacting galaxy pair giving the mock pumpkin a wry smile.
“What appear to be shining eyes and crooked smiles etched in this new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shot are the early stages of a collision between two galaxies,” NASA wrote on its website. The photo was originally published by the agency in 2020.
Its visibility is about 109,000 light years, about the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. The color of the pumpkin as a whole corresponds to the dark red starlight in a binary galaxy, and the glowing eye is a collection of stars around a pair of supermassive black holes.
What do you see? Maybe a cat curled up, or forming a sandstorm, or two eyes! Hubble has captured a pair of interacting galaxies spanning 100,000 light years. The glowing “eye” is a cluster of stars around a supermassive black hole. https://t.co/agBCu5WLyv pic.twitter.com/mdTL1akYvh
– Hubble Space Telescope 29 July 2022
The Hubble Space Telescope is an international collaborative project between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The space observatory has made more than 1.5 million observations of about 50,000 celestial bodies over its 32 years of operation and astronomers have published more than 19,000 scientific papers using Hubble data.
–
–
“Hipster friendly music fan. Analyst. Beer practitioner. Very charming twitter pioneer. Communicators.”
—-
–
