The Hubble telescope provided a stunning image of a star-forming river as four galaxies interact closely.
The newly modified image, first released in 2010, shows a rare interaction between the celestial bodies of the Hickson Compact Group 31.
NASA released a new image on May 17th, when scientists referred to the phenomenon in the picture as a river of star formation.
“This newly revised NASA Hubble Space Telescope image highlights the star-forming flow when four dwarf galaxies interact for the Higson Compact Group 31 (HCG 31) galaxy.”
There is a distorted group of bright blue and white stars in the upper-right corner of the image, NASA reported.
This region is called NGC 1741 and is actually two dwarf galaxies colliding.
To its right, a cigar-shaped dwarf galaxy is connected by a thin blue stream of stars connecting three stars.
The fourth galaxy is in the lower left corner of the image center.
A stream of young blue stars connects all four and points directly in a relatively small space.
The bright object in the center of the image is a star located between Earth and HCG 31, NASA said.
Encounters with dwarf galaxies are typically visible billions of light-years away, meaning they occurred billions of years ago.
However, HCG 31 is regarding 166 million light-years from Earth, which is relatively close by cosmic standards.
This newly revised image highlights a star-forming region created by the mixing of galaxies, which NASA calls “the dance of quartet gravity.”
“Blue represents visible blue light, showing young, hot blue stars, and red represents near-infrared light,” the scientists wrote.
Hubble’s Impressive Image
The Hubble Telescope has helped scientists explore space for over 30 years.
Also in May, the telescope captured awe-inspiring images. A spiral galaxy with a ‘great design’.
This stunning picture was taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and shows a galaxy called Messier 99 (or M99) in ultraviolet light and optical illumination.
In the photo, the galaxy’s dazzling arms take up most of the frame, sparkling in multiple colors of purple, blue, and deep red.
M99 is located in the constellation Coma Berenices, regarding 55 million light-years from Earth.
The European Space Agency said in a statement that the galaxy is considered a so-called grand design galaxy because of its “well-defined and prominent spiral arms”.
Scientists say these images are important because they helped study two different astronomical phenomena.
Astronomers were able to further explore the fading cosmic explosion, whose luminosity level lies somewhere between nova and supernova.
Novae are caused by interactions between white dwarfs and larger stars in binary systems, while supernovae consist of the violent death of massive stars.
The explosion was first observed in 2010 and is considered a great mystery to scientists who are not sure what caused it.
One such explanation, which the researchers have proposed, includes that the increased brightness of the star may be causing “giant planets to jump into their mothers,” NASA said.
Second, the researchers were able to use these images to explore the connection between the young star and the gas cloud in which it grows.
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