A cosmic jellyfish that lies over 800 million light-years away from Earth

This picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features JW100, also known as a 'jellyfish' galaxy, that lies in the constellation Pegasus, over 800 million light-years away from the Earth.

The tendrils of bright star-forming gas are formed by a process called ram pressure stripping, and their resemblance to dangling tentacles gives it the name the jellyfish galaxy.

Ram pressure stripping is a process that occurs when galaxies encounter the diffuse gas that pervades galaxy clusters. As galaxies plough through the thin gas in their surroundings generates a resistance force that strips gas and dust from the galaxy, resulting in the formation of trailing streamers that prominently adorn JW100.

These tendrils are of particular interest to astronomers as they represent star formation under extreme conditions and could help them better understand the process of star formation elsewhere in the universe.

This Hubble image also features a very large elliptical galaxy towards the top. Named IC 5338, it is the brightest galaxy in the galaxy cluster, known as a cD galaxy. It's normal for cD galaxies to exhibit multiple nuclei, as they are thought to grow by consuming smaller galaxies, the nuclei of which can take a long time to be absorbed, according to the European Space Agency's blog.

This observation is part of a sequence of observations designed to explore star formation in the tendrils of jellyfish galaxies. 

A portrait of a galactic jellyfish — our Picture of the Week features galaxy JW100 with streams of star-forming gas dripping from the disc of the galaxy like streaks of fresh paint. Read more here https://t.co/cd3EanzJit and 🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/WnQZqpKP6f

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) March 20, 2023

This celestial landscape was captured using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) which was installed during the telescope's Servicing Mission 4. The camera offers comparable performance to the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), but over a wider range of wavelengths.