Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Two interacting galaxies are warped by gravitational forces in Hubble image

Georgina Torbet
By

This week’s image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows two galaxies close enough together to have just one shared name: Arp-Madore 608-333. They are what is known as interacting galaxies, meaning that the huge pull of each of their gravitational fields is affecting the other. The power of gravity is warping their shapes and distorting them into uneven forms.

“Though they appear serene and unperturbed, the two are subtly warping one another through a mutual gravitational interaction that is disrupting and distorting both galaxies,” Hubble scientists said in a note accompanying the image release. “This drawn-out galactic interaction was captured by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.”

The two interacting galaxies making up the pair known as Arp-Madore 608-333 seem to float side by side in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
The two interacting galaxies making up the pair known as Arp-Madore 608-333. ESA/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, J. Dalcanton

These interacting galaxies are different from other galaxy pairs, like the pair called VV 191, imaged by Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope this week. VV 191 appears to be a close pair, but in fact, they are overlapping, not interacting. From our point of view on Earth, it seems that the two are occupying the same space, but one is in front of the other. A similar pair of overlapping galaxies that appear even closer together was imaged by Hubble earlier this year.

Related

When it comes to galaxies that are truly interacting because they are close together, things can get messy. Galaxies can collide with each other, creating tremendous pockets of star formation as they merge. These interactions can create stunning and unusual shapes, like the Angel Wing system, in which two merging galaxies have formed the shape of wings. Sometimes even more than two galaxies can interact, like the Hickson Compact Group 31 — also imaged by Hubble — which contains four galaxies that are in the process of merging into one.

However, two galaxies colliding don’t always merge to form a larger galaxy. Sometimes, these collisions can result in the annihilation of one of the galaxies, and scientists believe that it is the supermassive black hole found at the heart of almost all galaxies that determines whether a collision will result in a merger or in one galaxy destroying the other.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
How to watch Orion’s return flyby of the moon on Monday
NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft reached a maximum distance of nearly 270,000 miles from Earth during the Artemis I flight test before beginning its journey back toward Earth. Orion captured imagery of the Earth and Moon together from its distant lunar orbit, including this image on Nov. 28, 2022, taken from camera on one of the spacecraft’s solar array wings.
Watch NASA’s cinematic video of the Artemis I moon mission
The moon and Earth as seen from the Orion spacecraft in November 2022.
How to watch SpaceX launch NASA’s Lunar Flashlight mission
NASA's Lunar Flashlight spacecraft.
NASA’s moon spacecraft sets new distance record
Earth and the moon seen from NASA's Orion spacecraft.
SpaceX launches booster for 11th time, but this time it didn’t return
spacex launch booster 11th time falcon9
Ingenuity takes shortest flight in Martian aviation history
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.
How to watch SpaceX launch its new Cargo Dragon capsule to ISS
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo capsule lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on the company’s 22nd Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station.
Orion spacecraft enters distant retrograde orbit around the moon
View of the Moon seen from ESA's European Service Module that is powering NASA's Orion spacecraft to the Moon and back, on flight day nine of the Artemis I mission, on 24 November 2022.
Strangely chonky exoplanet has astronomers puzzled
Artist’s conception of a gas giant exoplanet orbiting around a Sun-like star. The young exoplanet HD 114082 b revolves around its Sun-like star within 110 days at a distance of 0.5 astronomical units.
All the science that’s launching to the space station today
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the company’s Dragon cargo spacecraft atop, is raised to a vertical position at NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on Nov. 21, 2022, in preparation for the 26th commercial resupply services launch to the International Space Station.
Listen to the spooky echoes of a black hole
The black hole in V404 Cygni is actively pulling material away from a companion star — with about half the mass of the Sun — into a disk around the invisible object. A burst of X-rays from the black hole detected in 2015 created the high-energy rings from a phenomenon known as light echoes, where light bounces off of dust clouds in between the system and Earth. In these images, X-rays from Chandra are shown, along with optical data from the Pan-STARRS telescope that depict the stars in the field of view.
Hubble captures a pair of galaxies merging into an unusual ring shape
The galaxy merger 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 particularly peculiar galaxies spread throughout the southern sky, and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies as well as more spectacular colliding galaxies. Arp-Madore 417-391, which lies around 670 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus in the southern celestial hemisphere, is one such galactic collision. The two galaxies were distorted by gravity and twisted into a colossal ring, leaving their cores nestled side by side.
See a stunning image of the Orion nebula stellar nursery
This infrared image of the Orion Nebula features plenty of dust but no stars. In these infrared wavelengths, it’s possible to see hot spots where new stars are forming, while unseen bright, massive stars have carved out caverns of empty space.