Capturing an Impressive Cosmic Angel at the Edge of the Universe – Teach Me About Science

Galaxy mergers are a spectacularly beautiful phenomenon. Recently, the famous NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, captured an impressive photo of two colliding galaxies, whose symmetrical shape gives the impression of observing “galactic wings”.See title image) this fusion occurred in system VV689, nicknamed “Angel Wing” in Spanish due to its unique formation and shape. You can download the image as wallpaper”Hubble examines clusters of galactic wings“

It is described on the official website NASA|ESA Hubble “Unlike random alignments of galaxies that appear to overlap from our perspective on Earth, the two galaxies in VV689 are in the midst of a collision.” Although we are often amazed by the grandiose images that these types of events present us with, in fact interstellar collisions are not so strange, these interactions occur in many cases in the universe right now.

Indeed, the Milky Way, our own spiral galaxy that belongs to the Solar System and planet Earth, has suffered various past collisions with smaller galaxies for its formation, and other mergers with neighboring galaxies are expected in the future. Researchers are interested in these phenomena because the study of the formation and interaction of galaxies reveals information about their evolution and can help explain the origin of the universe.

In fact, all large galaxies are formed by different collisions and interactions with smaller galaxies in events lasting billions of years, and this interaction gives the particular shape we observe. The interaction between these elements of the universe is one of the most important forces in the universe, which explains its formation, gravity, which reaches its maximum expression to allow the approach and subsequent collision of galaxies.

Likewise, interstellar interactions are believed to have a very important connection to the birth of stars, as their collisions are accompanied by bursts of star formation, although the assessment of their impact is still questioned.

Finally, the stunning image of the angel wings colliding is part of a dataset “Galaxy Zoo” It's an astronomy project that aims to classify galaxies based on robotic telescope data, billed as a “citizen science” event as it seeks the support of volunteers to explore the 100 billion known galaxies in the universe. Also, describe Galaxy Zoo His mission is to “try to understand these processes and discover what galaxies can tell us about the past, present and future of the universe as a whole.”

Report on NASA|ESA Hubble.