Hubble captures highly disturbed galaxy with unusually distorted shape; NASA shares visual

NASA’s Galaxies Galore series has another spectacular image in its collection thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope. Featuring the NGC 3718, the new picture features a ‘highly disturbed’ spiral galaxy that has an unusual and warped shape making it look like the letter ‘S’ when observed from Earth. NASA says that this portion of the galaxy imaged by Hubble also shows a thin thread of dark dust which along with the galaxy's gas lane has distorted into this unique configuration. 

More about the 'disturbed' galaxy

(Portion of the NGC 3718 observed by Hubble is seen in the lower left; Image: NASA)

According to NASA, this galaxy, also called Arp 214, got its strange and 'disturbed' shape due to a strong gravitational interaction with another galaxy named NGC 3729 which lies next to it, approximately 1,50,000 light-years away. The features that emerged as a result of the gravitational interaction are the line of reddish star formation that extends toward the right side of the image and the dark dust tendril extending toward the left side. However, Hubble was unable to photograph the nucleus of the galaxy because the thick and dense dust lanes block the wavelengths of both visible and ultraviolet light. 

The agency revealed that this particular image was taken in infrared and visible light as part of a study examining central regions of disk-shaped galaxies with stars in their nearby environment. "The study was meant to help clarify the relationship between the mass of supermassive black holes and the properties of galactic bulges; and to investigate star formation on a galactic scale, from the region around the nucleus to a galaxy’s disk," NASA said in a statement. 

Hubble captures another galactic dance

The agency recently shared another Hubble image featuring the interaction of two galaxies residing between 50 and 60 million light-years away toward the constellation Leo. Collectively called Arp 94, the picture features galaxy NGC 3227 and NGC 3226 engaged in what NASA calls a 'galactic dance'. Notably, NGC 3227 is a Seyfert galaxy, the type with a very active nucleus, and the duo was observed as part of the observations meant to measure black hole masses by observing the dynamics of gas at the centers of bright cluster galaxies.

Image: NASA