Hubble Space Telescope has captured an odd pair of galaxies – one large spiral galaxy and its companion. The pair is collectively called Arp 86. The larger spiral galaxy is NCG 7753 and the smaller galaxy is NGC 7752.
They are close enough that the smaller NGC 7752 seems to be touching one of the arms of NCG 7753, which is the reason they are given a shared name where “Arp” stands for the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. It is a list of galaxies that are compiled by an astronomer named Halton Arp in 1966.
Understanding star formation in detail
The list also includes spiral galaxies with three arms, or with just one, or with one arm heavier than the others. It also includes odd-shaped amorphous galaxies or double or multiple interacting galaxies. As for Arp 86, it could enable scientists to understand how stars form in cold gas environments.
“Hubble observed Arp 86 as part of a larger effort to understand the connections between young stars and the clouds of cold gas in which they form,” Hubble scientists write. “Hubble gazed into star clusters and clouds of gas and dust in a variety of environments dotted throughout nearby galaxies. Combined with measurements from ALMA [the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array], a gigantic radio telescope perched high in the Chilean Andes, these Hubble observations provide a treasure trove of data for astronomers working to understand how stars are born.”
Hubble doing what it does best
Recently, Hubble found something very rare when it captured a star going supernova. Supernova SN 2020fqv lies in the two interacting Butterfly Galaxies, which are 60 million light-years away from our planet. It was first spotted in April 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory when the star was at an initial stage of a supernova, and the Hubble team turned their attention to it.
Hubble caught a glimpse of the material around the star called circumstellar material, just hours after the supernova occurred. It is a great opportunity for scientists to study what happened to the star during the end of its life.
