Hubble Space Telescope officials recently released an image in anticipation of the 32nd anniversary of the venerable optical device, which is on April 24.
Space.com reported that five galaxies would merge into a "single star group" in about one billion years in relation to the said Hubble anniversary.
Specifically, Hubble captured an image of an unusual group of merging galaxies that offers a glimpse into the processes in the early universe.
These five galaxies identified as the "Hickson Compact Group or HCG 40, are currently merging into one entity, a process that will complete approximately one billion years from now, as indicated in a statement.
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In this image released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Hubble Space Telescope is backdropped against black space as the Space Shuttle Columbia, with a crew of seven astronauts on board, eases closer on March 3, 2002, to latch its 50-foot-long robotic arm onto a fixture on the giant telescope.
'Quasars' Fueled
The image is part of the longstanding work of the Hubble Space Telescope in studying the evolution of galaxies. According to the Hubble team, investigating nearby groups like HCG 40 is helping astronomers learn about how galaxies formed.
The officials also said, tight groups like this may have been more typical in the early universe "when they superheated, infalling material" may have fueled quite an energetic black holes known as "quasars."
The group found some 300 million light-years away from Earth, which is extremely tightly packed into a region of space less than double a stellar disk's diameter of the galaxy, the Milky Way.
Even though scientists have discovered more than 100 compact galaxy groups, the Hubble team said the configuration of HGC is rather extraordinary as the galaxies are not part of a larger cluster of galaxies, making them an interesting target for astronomers to investigate. How such a configuration came into being remains a matter of discussion.
Invisible Form of Matter Linked to Galaxies
In the statement, Nation World News said in a similar report, the Hubble officials wrote, one probable explanation is that there is a lot of dark matter, "an unknown and invisible form of matter," linked to the said galaxies.
If these galaxies come close together, the dark matter can then create a huge cloud within which such galaxies are orbiting.
As the galaxies are plowing through the dark matter, they're feeling a resistive force because of its gravitational impacts. This slows their motion and makes the galaxies lose energy, and thus they fall together.
Hubble officials also explained that examining the details of galaxies in nearby groups like this one helps astronomers sort out where and when galaxies formed themselves, not to mention what they are formed from.
Hubble Stays Healthy Amidst Glitches
The Hubble Space Telescope launched on the Discovery space shuttle on April 24, 1990, oto better understandthe early universe. Astronauts serviced the observatory five times.
According to a similar VN Explorer report, while this space telescope ages, and as it overcame some serious "safe mood" incidents last year, Hubble stays healthy.
NASA is currently planning to pair the work of Hubble with the James Webb Space Telescope, its recently launched successor. At present, Webb is in a months-long commissioning period for completion sometime in June.
A report about Hubble Space Telescope's 32nd anniversary is shown on NASA Goddard's YouTube video below:
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