NASA Hubble Space Telescope Captures Two Elliptical Galaxies Merging

The NASA Hubble Space Telescope has made an unusual discovery. It's taken a snapshot of two elliptical galaxies merging into one while a "chain" of young, stellar superclusters wind around the galaxies' nuclei.

In the latest image, you can see the two galaxies that are part of a galaxy cluster known as [HGO2008]SDSS J1531+3414. These two galaxies have strayed into each other's paths and are actually caught in the midst of merging into one object. This violent process strips gas, dust and stars away from the galaxies involved and can alter their appearances. The two galaxies are a massive 330,000 light-years across, which is nearly three times larger than our own galaxy.

Actually finding two elliptical galaxies merging is rare. What's even rarer, though, is finding a merger between ellipticals rich enough in gas to induce star formation. In fact, galaxies in clusters are generally thought to have been deprived of their gaseous contents; yet this clearly isn't the case when it comes to these two merging galaxies. In fact, there's a newborn stellar population associated with them.

The new stars are in what is known as a "beads on a string" star formation. This type of formation appears as a knotted rope of gaseous filaments with bright patches of new stars. In all, 19 compact clumps of young stars make up the length of this "string," which is woven together with narrow filaments of hydrogen gas and is about 100,000 light-years in length.

In the picture, the electric blue arcs making up the egg-like shape framing these objects are a result of the galaxy cluster's immense gravity. The gravity actually warps the space around it and creates bizarre patterns.

The findings reveal a bit more about merging systems and gives scientists a good look at what exactly happens when this phenomenon occurs.