NASA Hubble captures a breathtaking image of an intergalactic bridge

Between black holes devouring young stars and the empty spaces surrounding crowded and exploding nebulae, the dark caves of our universe are often swept away by a glimmer of light. This juxtaposition is starkly evident in one of NASA’s most recent Hubble Space Telescope images.

Last week, the agency released an ethereal demo of the galactic trio Arp 248, aka Wild’s Triplet, for both of them. finder and the quite extravagant nature of the scene itself. Ha.

In this flawless image, two out of three galaxies can be seen at the front of the void of space, oozing into each other as if made of a watery coating of water more than water and forming what I can only describe as an intergalactic bridge. An unconnected third world stands in the far land, surrounded by a deceptive little glint representing a cosmic age until more Galaxies are spread all over the universe.

What’s particularly startling about this image is that from Hubble’s view – in Earth’s orbit, about 200 million light-years away – the three galaxies are compact enough to fit our computer screens.

In fact, these worlds are many (many) light-years across, and contain an incomprehensible amount of hits like our sun, exoplanets like our solar system’s eight, and moons like our glowing lunar companion.

They are miniature universes in their own right, existing on an unfathomable scale of the human mind but available for us to download as our desktop wallpaper.

In fact, because of those massive contents, the huge snails in the centerpiece of this image were attached to a luminous bridge in the first place. They both harness extremely strong gravitational forces and thus pull each other as if they are playing a gentle tug of war, mistakenly creating what is known as a tidal tail, or An elongated stream of stars and iridescent interstellar dust.

Tidal tails are usually the product of galaxies running close to each other while on the path of merging into one massive galaxy. We’ve seen this amazing phenomenon many times already – tidal tails are also responsible for some of the names of some of the most remarkable galactic systems.

“mice“or NGC 4676, boasts merging galaxies 300 million light-years from Earth,” andtadpole,” or UGC 10214, contains a large galaxy in the process of tearing apart a smaller galaxy, another type of event that has resulted in a remarkable tidal tail.

Even our own Milky Way galaxy is currently on a level Collision cycle with Andromedawhich means that she may eventually be born A kind of intergalactic bridge Also – but don’t worry.

The space between stars and planets within galaxies Much bigger than you might think.

When galaxies merge, it’s very likely only a few actual Collisions occur. Think of two large crowds entering the stadium, merging into one huge crowd. Most of the time, individuals don’t literally bump into each other. They just settle close to each other. Now imagine the same situation, except for about a light-year of space between each person.

Amazingly, the title “Arp” in Arp 248 comes from the title of the late astronomer Halton ArpCreated with astronomer Barry Mador Atlas of alien galaxies in 1966.

“Each group contains a surprisingly strange collection of galaxies, including interacting galaxies such as Arp 248, as well as one- or three-arm spiral galaxies, galaxies with shell-like structures, and a variety of other space anomalies,” NASA said. Atlas.

It is a monumental work filled with more examples of our wonderfully disparate universe, a space constructed from the mind of a poet and condensed with the skill of a machine.