Two galaxies appear to be colliding in image captured by Hubble telescope

The telescope captured NGC 105, which lies roughly 215 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces, and its elongated neighbour 'PGC 212515' that is actually far more distant and remains relatively unknown to astronomers.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image showing a spiral galaxy plunging edge-on into a collision with a neighbouring galaxy.

While the two neighbouring galaxies appear to be colliding, the galactic conjunction is just a chance alignment of the two objects in the night sky.

The telescope captured NGC 105, which lies roughly 215 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces, and its elongated neighbour 'PGC 212515' that is actually far more distant and remains relatively unknown to astronomers.

Our latest Picture of the Week shows the spiral galaxy NGC 105, which appears to be colliding with another galaxy. But is that actually the case?🔗 https://t.co/YtP6wmFtUaCredit: @esa / @HUBBLE_space / @NASA , D. Jones, A. Riess et al.Acknowledgement: R. Colombari pic.twitter.com/r61csL1Ksp

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) January 3, 2022

"These misleading conjunctions occur frequently in astronomy — for example, the stars in constellations are at vastly different distances from Earth, and only appear to form patterns thanks to the chance alignment of their component stars," reads a post in the official ESA Hubble website.

According to the post, the observations in the image are from a vast collection of Hubble measurements examining nearby galaxies which contain two fascinating astronomical phenomena - Cepheid variables and cataclysmic supernova explosions.

"Whilst these two phenomena may appear to be unrelated — one is a peculiar class of pulsating stars and the other is the explosion caused by the catastrophic final throes of a massive star's life — they are both used by astronomers for a very particular purpose: measuring the vast distances to astronomical objects," reads the post.

Launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between the European Space Agency (ESA) and U.S. space agency NASA. The telescope has made more than 1.5 million observations and more than 19,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published on its discoveries.