'Locked in cosmic dance': NASA shares visuals of two distant galaxies in close alignment

NASA’s Hubble view of the close alignment between two galaxies that mimic a cosmic collision has stunned the astrophiles. Hubble Space Telescope captured a rare incredible pair of overlapping galaxies called NGC 3314 that are separated by tens of millions of light-years, and yet appear as though they are locked in a cosmic dance. According to NASA, the two galaxies NGC 3314A and NGC 3314B are situated in the constellation Hydra and are about ten times the distance between the Milky Way and the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy.

“The motion of the two galaxies indicates that they are both relatively undisturbed and that they are moving in markedly different directions. This indicates they are not on any collision course,” NASA informed in a release. NGC 3314A's warped shape, according to scientists, is due to an encounter with another nearby galaxy which is a large spiral galaxy NGC 3312, located outside the Hubble image. The iconic images compilation is in fact a trick of perspective, NASA explained, as the two galaxies are in alignment from the viewer’s vantage point.

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In the visuals that NASA’s Hubble shared on its official Instagram account, galaxy NGC 3314B's dust lanes appear lighter than those of NGC 3314A due to their alignment. " This is not because that galaxy lacks dust, but rather because its dust lanes are lightened by the bright fog of stars in the foreground," NASA informed. Furthermore, the color composite of the visuals was actually produced from exposures taken in blue and red light with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The pair of galaxies, which lie approximately 140 million light-years from Earth, is located in the direction of the southern hemisphere constellation Hydra, according to NASA. 

Hubble's 'molten ring' image

Similarly, NASA shared a rare phenomenon captured by Hubble known as the  GAL-CLUS-022058s, which is the largest and one of the most complete Einstein rings termed as the ‘Molten Ring’ situated in the southern hemisphere constellation of Fornax. Taking to its official Instagram handle, NASA’s Hubble shared the image of one of the unique and rarely witnessed the event in the host constellation that scientists created using the ‘gravitational lensing’, a technique, which according to NASA, causes light shining from far away to be bent and pulled by the gravity of an object between its source and the observer. 

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