The Hubble Space Telescope is back at what it does best. The space telescope has snapped a mesmerizing image of an intergalactic collision. The image shows two galaxies that are on the verge of colliding with each other.
The collision is predicted by experts to produce a burst of star formation and form a compact starburst galaxy. The European Space Agency (ESA) shared the image with the caption reading “clash of titans.” The galaxy pair IC 1623 is located 275 million light-years away from Earth in the Cetus constellation.
The merger of galaxies is said to produce a powerful gas inflow. When seen in infrared, the galaxies appear very bright with a substantial amount of warm and dense gas.
James Webb Telescope to carry forward the study
The merger was first observed in 2008 when the space telescope peered into the system and noticed that inflow of gas could trigger starburst activity that will boost its brightness beyond ultraluminous levels.
The Hubble telescope leveraged its Advanced Camera for Surveys to chronicle the optical and infrared wavelengths, where were later processed to produce the final image.
Scientists merged observations from eight filters spanning infrared to ultraviolet wavelengths to highlight details of the galaxy and its potential collision. They are optimistic about the observations that the James Webb Telescope will make, as they will provide new detail about the galaxy and star formation.
The James Webb Telescope “will shed more light on the processes powering extreme star formation in environments such as IC 1623,” the Hubble team said in a statement.
Hubble telescope showing aging issues
As of now, the Hubble telescope is undergoing maintenance work after its computer stopped working. The payload computer controls and coordinates the science instruments aboard the telescope. The degradation of the system has resulted in the halting of science operations, which are currently under safe mode.
The computer crashed on June 13 and the mission controllers tried restarting the computer soon after. However, they failed to do so, and the degrading memory of the system is believed to be the primary reason behind the system breakdown.
