With this rare group of galaxies, celebrate the birthday of 32-year-old Hubble!

Video credit: NASA Goddard Space Center; Lead Producer: Miranda Chabot; Support: Paul Morris; Technical Support: Aaron Chabot; Aaron E. Lepsch

Subtitle Production: Wow

For the 32nd year of orbit, a stunning new set of images, made up of five galaxies, is presented for the first time, called the Hickson Compact 40 Galaxies. After 32 years of painstaking observations, the Hubble Space Telescope continues to unravel the mysteries of the universe. The video above is some of Hubble's scientific achievements in orbit in the last year.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, Space Telescope Science Institute; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan, Space Telescope Science Institute

NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's 32nd birthday with this stunning photo showing a rare group of five galaxies called The Hickson Compact Group 40.

The galaxy group consists of three swirling galaxies, an elliptical galaxy, and a lenticular galaxy. Somehow, these different types of galaxies intersect with each other over the course of evolution, creating an unusually crowded and eclectic collection of galaxies.

Guided by the dance of gravity, galaxies are rubbing shoulders, and entire galaxy groups can even be accommodated in a space region less than twice the diameter of the Milky Way's stellar disk.

Such dense clusters of galaxies can be found in the centers of massive clusters, but the galaxies within them are each on their own side of the universe, in the direction of Hydra.

One possible explanation is that these galaxies are connected together by a lot of dark matter, and if they come close together, the dark matter forms a large cloud. As galaxies move through dark matter, the gravitational effects of dark matter cause them to feel a kind of resistance that slows their movements and causes them to lose energy, collapsing together.

Thus, this snapshot captures a very special moment in galactic life, and after about 1 billion years, they will eventually collide and merge to form a giant elliptical galaxy.

Astronomers have not only studied this dense group of galaxies in the visible light range, but have also explored radio, infrared, and X-ray wavelengths: almost all galaxies have a compact radio source at their cores, which may be evidence of the existence of supermassive black holes; X-ray observations have shown that large amounts of hot gas exist between galaxies, so they have been interacting with each other; infrared observations have revealed clues to the speed of new star formation.

Although more than 100 such dense galaxy groups have been cataloged in sky survey studies decades ago, the Hexson Compact Galaxy Group 40 is one of the most dense. Observations suggest that such dense clusters of galaxies may have been more common in the early universe, providing energy for black holes in quasars whose extreme brightness comes from light from overheated, collapsed material. Studying the details of galaxies in nearby clusters like this helps astronomers sort out when and where galaxies come together and what they are made of.

"I remember seeing this on a sky survey and saying, 'Wow, look at that!' Paul Hickson of the University of British Columbia in Canada said, "When I looked at the sky survey, I was just using a large plastic ruler and a magnifying glass. By browsing a collection of strange galaxies first published in 1966 by Halton Arp, he rediscovered this group of galaxies.

Hubble was sent into Earth orbit by NASA astronauts on April 25, 1990, aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, and to date, Hubble has made 1.5 million observations of some 50,000 celestial targets. This treasure trove of knowledge about the universe is stored in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, for public inspection.

Hubble's unique ability to observe visible and ultraviolet light is an important scientific complement to the recently launched Infrared Observations at the Webb Space Telescope, which Will begin this summer.

Video credit: NASA Goddard Space Center; Lead Producer: Paul Morris; Narrator: Dr. Jennifer Wiseman

Subtitle Production: Wow

The Hubble Space Telescope is an international collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. STScI) is responsible for Hubble's science business, and THE STScI is run for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Washington, D.C., USA.

References:

[1]https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/celebrating-hubbles-32nd-birthday-with-an-eclectic-galaxy-grouping

[2] https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14139