The Hubble Telescope Will Celebrate Its 32nd Anniversary This Week, Presents Amazing Galactic Viewings!

The Hubble Space Telescope will celebrate its 32nd anniversary. (photo: doc. NASA)

JAKARTA - Soon the Hubble Space Telescope will celebrate its 32nd anniversary on Sunday, April 24, since its launch in 1990.

To celebrate, astronomy fans will be treated to a special image taken by the Hubble Telescope in action.

That image, not just one galaxy, but five galaxies grouped together. Scientists describe it as the Hubble zoo.

The galaxy gang, technically known as the Hickson Compact Group (HCG) 40 is so close together that they will eventually collide and merge into one giant galaxy. This rare event will not occur for another 1 billion years.

"I remember seeing this on a sky survey and saying, Wow look at that! All I was using at the time was a large plastic ruler and a magnifying glass while looking at the sky survey prints," said astronomer at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Paul. Hickson who discovered the five galaxies.

The five remain close but separate and include three different types of galaxies. Three of the group are spiral galaxies, such as the Milky Way, while one is an elliptical galaxy (meaning smooth and without spiral arms), the last is a lenticular galaxy, which is halfway between a spiral galaxy and an elliptical galaxy.

Although it is common to see two galaxies merge, and even to see clusters of galaxies close together, this event was one of the densest observed to date.

"Caught in the relaxed dance of gravity, the entire group is so crowded that it can fit in a region of space less than twice the diameter of our Milky Way's disk," the Hubble scientists said.

In addition to being a unique image, collecting data about such a dense cluster of galaxies can help astronomers study dark matter.

Usually, dense clusters of galaxies are found at the center of very large clusters of galaxies, but this particular cluster exits alone, relatively far from other galaxies. Scientists think it may be because these galaxies harbor large amounts of dark matter.

According to physicists, dark matter is a mysterious substance, it must exist based on the movement of galaxies, it not only exists in the universe, but also makes up more than a quarter of the mass of everything in existence.

Studying very dense clusters of galaxies like these can also help scientists understand how galaxies form and evolve.