Hubble captures image of galaxies colliding 230 Million Light Years away

Located in the constellation of Hercules, about 230 million light-years away, NGC 6052 is a pair of colliding galaxies. They were first discovered in 1784 by William Herschel and were originally classified as a single irregular galaxy because of their odd shape. However, we now know that NGC 6052 actually consists of two galaxies that are in the process of colliding. This particular image of NGC 6052 was taken using the Wide Field Camera 3 on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a spectacular new image of one of the most dramatic events in the universe - the collision of two galaxies.

This epic galactic merger, called NGC 6052, is located 230 million light years away from earth in the constellation of Hercules. It was first spotted by astronomer William Herschel on June 11, 1784, who thought it was a single oddball galaxy with an exceptionally strange shape.

As more sophisticated telescopes were developed, scientists were able to pinpoint that this giant cluster of stars was made up of two galaxies - 6052A and 6052B.

The merger also got attention in the 1980s after an extremely powerful supernova was spotted inside it. Billions of years ago, both 6052A and 6052B were pulled towards each other under the influence of mutual gravity until they eventually smashed with each other. They are currently in a late stage of a galactic merger and will become one unified galaxy in future.

The same fate is predicted to befall the Milky Way, which is expected to collide with the much larger Andromeda galaxy in about 4 billion years from now, that would create a single "Milkdromeda" galaxy.

Galactic mergers are violent cosmic events that eject stars into the intergalactic medium. But overall, the predicted effect on the individual stars is minimal, so it is unlikely that our solar system would be disrupted by the merger.

However, the earth would still become uninhabitable long before this event, as our sun would expand to turn into a red supergiant.

Hubble had captured first image of NGC 6052 merger back in 2015 with its Wide Field Planetary Camera. The new image released on Friday, was taken with the upgraded Wide Field Planetary Camera 3 (WFC3) which has a wider field of view and better image resolution than its predecessor.