He managed to capture an impressive cosmic angel at the frontier of the universe – he taught me about science

The merger of galaxies is an amazingly beautiful phenomenon. Recently, the famous Hubble Space Telescope of NASA and the European Space Agency, which was launched in 1990, was able to capture a dazzling image of two colliding galaxies, as their symmetrical shape gives the impression of observing the “wings of the galaxy.”See header image). This merger occurred in the VV689 system, which was nicknamed “Angel Wing”, Spanish for “angel wings”, due to its unique configuration and shape. You can download the image as wallpaper through “Hubble inspects a group of galactic wings“

It is described on the official website NASA | European Space Agency Hubble “Unlike the alignment of galaxies that only appear to overlap from our vantage point on Earth, the two galaxies in VV689 are in the middle of a collision.” Although we often marvel at these types of events because of the tremendous images they provide us, in reality, galactic collisions are not that strange, as these interactions are currently occurring in multiple events in the universe.

In fact, our spiral galaxy, to which the solar system and planet Earth, the Milky Way, belong, has in the past suffered various collisions with smaller galaxies to form it, and further mergers with neighboring galaxies are also expected in the future. Researchers are interested in these phenomena because studying the formation of galaxies and their interaction reveals information about their evolution, and this can help explain the origin of the universe itself.

In fact, all large galaxies were formed by various collisions and interactions with smaller galaxies in events lasting billions of years, and this interaction gives them the special pattern of formation that we observe. The interaction between these components of the universe is due to one of the most important forces in the universe that explains much of its formation, gravity, which reaches its maximum expression to allow galaxies to approach and subsequently collide.

Likewise, galactic interactions are thought to have a very important relationship with star birth as their collisions are accompanied by bursts of star formation, although the estimate of their effect is still questionable.

Finally, the stunning image of colliding angel wings is part of a dataset from “Galaxy Zoo” It is an astronomy project whose goal is to classify galaxies based on robotic telescope data that has been reported as a “citizen science” event because it is asking for volunteer support to explore the 100 billion galaxies recognized in the universe. With this description Galaxy Zoo His intention is “to try to understand these processes and discover what galaxies can tell us about the past, present and future of the universe as a whole.”

Report for NASA | European Space Agency Hubble.