Hubble Telescope Captures Event Of Two Large Galaxies Flanking Small Galaxy

From Hubble's resulting images, two large spiral galaxies can be seen flanking a small spiral galaxy.. (photo: doc. NASA and ESA)

JAKARTA - Two of three interacting galaxies called Arp 248, also known as the Wild's Triplet, were captured by the Hubble Space Telescope this week.

Arp 248 consists of three large and small spiral galaxies connected together by a star bridge. It is located, 200 million light-years away in Virgo constellation.

The three galaxies are named by Australian astronomer Paul Wild, who was a solar researcher and studied the galaxy in the 1950s.

The Hubble image shows two large spiral galaxies flanking a small spiral galaxy. The two interacting galaxies are the galaxies whose gravity affects them the most, and in this case, it is gravity that binds the three together.

Once bound together, the event would result in the bright bridge seen spanning between the two galaxies in the Hubble image.

The bridge shines brightly with light and dust-filled stars, forming an elongated region called the tidal tail. It is formed by the mutual gravitational attraction of two large galaxies.

Launching Digital Trends, Monday, November 7, Hubble is not the first time to share pictures of interacting galaxies, previously, two spiral galaxies and a pair of other galaxies were also captured by Huble when interacting with each other.

For information, Hubble was created with the aim of exploring various eccentric galaxies such as Arp 248 for future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and Hubble itself.