NASA telescope spots a ghostly galactic jellyfish | See pic

In this latest image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a galactic jellyfish seems to be floating effortlessly. The galaxy, named JO175, lies over 650 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Telescopium.

Jellyfish galaxies are so named because of their striking resemblance to jellyfish - the tendrils of star-forming gas and dust that trail behind them contain clumps of star formation and give these galaxies a particularly striking appearance. Jellyfish galaxies are found within galaxy clusters and their unique tendrils are formed by the pressure of the thin, superheated plasma that fills these clusters.

Hubble used its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to capture the JO175 galaxy with remarkable clarity, revealing several other distant galaxies scattered across the background. Additionally, a brilliant four-pointed star can be seen towards the lower right side of the image.

👻 The ghostly galactic jellyfish JO175 appears to hang suspended in our ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week. This galaxy lies over 650 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Telescopium, and was captured in crystal-clear detail by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/n484Dt6w72

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) May 1, 2023

NASA's Hubble telescope recently delved deeply into jellyfish clusters, focusing on the star-forming clusters of gas and dust embedded in their tendrils.

Astronomers were interested in gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms that drive star formation throughout the Universe, and thus they chose to investigate the star-forming clumps within the tendrils of jellyfish clusters.

What they found was particularly intriguing - their research suggests that the conditions for star formation in galactic discs were analogous to those within the tendrils of jellyfish galaxies. This finding has important implications for understanding the broader patterns of star formation across the cosmos.