Hubble Space Telescope image shows galaxies 671 million light-years away

NASA captures a ‘smiling’ sun

NASA shared a video taken by its Solar Dynamic Observatory showing dark spots on the sun, giving the illusion of a smile. (Credit: @NASASun/Twitter)

Scientists from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) released an image of a pair of merging galaxies on Friday.

The merger of galaxies, known as Arp-Madore 417-391is located 671 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.

Captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, it is the result of two galaxies warped by gravity and twisted together into a ring.

Their nuclei remained nestled next to each other.

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The merger of galaxies Arp-Madore 417-391 steals the spotlight in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of very peculiar galaxies scattered across the southern sky, and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies and more spectacular colliding galaxies.
(ESA/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, J. Dalcanton)

The telescope used its Advanced Camera for Surveys to capture this scene and the ESA said the instrument is optimized for that hunt for galaxies and clusters of galaxies in the old universe.

The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of strange galaxies scattered across the southern sky.

Arp Madore 417-391 close up
(Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, J. Dalcanton)

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The photo comes from a selection of Hubble observations designed to create a list of intriguing targets for follow-up observations with the international James Webb space telescope and other ground-based telescopes.