INDOZONE.ID – Recently, the United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) managed to capture the moment when three galaxy collide with each other in outer space. The stunning sighting was captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
As reported Live Science, the collision occurs as the three galaxies slowly attract one another. In addition, they also tear each other apart by the gravitational force competition.
NASA says collisions between galaxies are common throughout the universe, and all major galaxies, including our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
Although the appearance of a collision between galaxies looks so chaotic, but a collision like that will actually create more new things than see an destruction.
As the gas from the three galaxies collided and condensed, the vast ocean of matter from which new stars would emerge gathers at the center of the newly united galaxy.
Meanwhile, existing stars will not be affected by the collision of the three galaxies. This happens because the gravitational attraction between the three galaxies will bend the existing stars according to their orbital paths.
According to NASA, the galaxy cluster seen above, called IC 2431, is located about 681 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer.
Astronomers detected the merger thanks to a citizen science project called Galaxy Zoo, which invited more than 100,000 volunteers to classify images of 900,000 galaxies captured by the Hubble telescope that were never thoroughly examined.
Studying galaxy mergers can help astronomers better understand the Milky Way’s past and future. The Milky Way is thought to have devoured more than a dozen galaxies over the past 12 billion years, including during the merger of the much-named Gaia sausage.
Meanwhile, our galaxy appears on track to merge with the nearby Andromeda galaxy about 4.5 billion years from now. The merger would completely change the night sky above Earth but would likely keep the solar system from being damaged.
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