Hubble spots an unusual galaxy 670 million light-years away from Earth

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this spectacular view of a galactic collision. The galaxy merger Arp-Madore 417-391 lies around 670 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus in the southern celestial hemisphere.

The two galaxies have been distorted by gravity and twisted into a colossal ring, leaving the cores of the two galaxies nestled side by side.

In the above image, two galaxies right of the centre can be seen forming a narrow blue ring while their cores are forming a bulge on the ring's side. Just above this celestial ring lies a bright, orange star. This Hubble image also features two smaller spiral galaxies at the left of the centre, as well as a few stars.

Hubble used its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to capture this scene. The instrument replaced Hubble's Faint Object Camera during Servicing Mission 3B and has been contributing to scientific discovery for 20 years. Throughout its lifetime it has been involved in everything from mapping the distribution of dark matter to studying the evolution of galaxy clusters, the European Space Agency wrote in a post.

This image comes from a selection of Hubble observations designed to create a list of intriguing targets for follow-up observations with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, as well as other ground-based telescopes.

1/ In our picture of the week, #Hubble went hunting an unusual galaxy 🧐 Lying around 670 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus, Arp-Madore 417-391 is a galactic collision between two galaxies 🌀🌀 Read more: https://t.co/w98PZwBn7i & 👇 pic.twitter.com/exEX4LAI8l

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) November 21, 2022