To
commemorate almost two decades of photographing the wonders of the universe,
the Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a peculiar group of interacting
galaxies that contains a "cosmic fountain" of stars, gas and dust
that stretches about 100,000 light years.
Over the
past 19 years, Hubble
has taken many images
of galactic collisions and close encounters.
The new
image of a trio of galaxies, called Arp 194, looks as if one of the galaxies has
sprung a leak. The bright blue streamer seen in the image is really a stretched
spiral arm full of newborn blue stars. This stellar activity typically happens
when two galaxies interact and gravitationally tug at each other.
Hubble's
resolution shows clearly that the stream of material lies in front of the
southern component of Arp 194, as shown by the dust that is silhouetted around
the star cluster complexes.
Resembling
a pair of owl's eyes, the two nuclei of the colliding galaxies can be seen in
the process of merging at the upper left of the image. The bizarre blue bridge
of material extending out from the northern component looks as if it connects
to a third galaxy but in reality this galaxy is in the background and not
connected at all.
The details
of the interactions among the multiple galaxies that make up Arp 194 are
complex. The system was most likely disrupted by a previous collision or close
encounter. The shapes of all the galaxies involved have been distorted by their
gravitational interactions with one another.
Arp 194,
located in the constellation of Cepheus, resides approximately 600 million
light-years away from Earth. Arp 194 is one of thousands of interacting and
merging galaxies known in our nearby Universe.
The new
picture was issued to celebrate the 19th anniversary of the launch of the
Hubble Space Telescope, a joint NASA/ESA venture, aboard the space shuttle
Discovery in 1990. The
last planned servicing of the telescope is scheduled for May. Hubble has
made more than 880,000 observations and snapped over 570,000 images of 29,000
celestial objects over the past 19 years.
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