Hubble spies a galactic gem 520 million light-years from Earth

Since its launch in the 1990s, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been beaming back stunning images of the universe. In the latest picture, the space-based observatory can be seen spying on a galactic gem - CGCG 396-2, an unusual multi-armed galaxy merger which lies around 520 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion.

Our latest Picture of the Week spies a galactic gem: CGCG 396-2, an unusual multi-armed galaxy merger, captured as part of Galaxy Zoo, a citizen science project.🔗 https://t.co/ZTu9pISF2v Credit: @esa / @HUBBLE_space / @NASA , W. Keel pic.twitter.com/jA8Kl1WWUA

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) July 4, 2022

This picture of CGCG 396-2 was captured in this image by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which was installed on the telescope during Servicing Mission 3B in 2002. Its wavelength range extends from the ultraviolet, through the visible and out to the near-infrared and the camera has the ability to map large areas of the sky in great detail.

Sharing the image, the European Space Agency (ESA) wrote, "This observation is a gem from the Galaxy Zoo project, a citizen science project in which hundreds of thousands of volunteers classified galaxies to help scientists solve a problem of astronomical proportions — how to sort through the vast amounts of data generated by robotic telescopes. Following a public vote, a selection of the most astronomically intriguing objects from the Galaxy Zoo were selected for follow-up observations with Hubble."

Since its initial success, the Galaxy Zoo project and its successor projects have contributed to more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles and led to a rich variety of intriguing astronomical discoveries above and beyond their initial goals.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international collaboration between NASA and ESA. The space-based telescope has made more than 1.5 million observations of about 50,000 celestial objects and more than 19,000 scientific papers have been published by astronomers using Hubble data.