Best view yet of merging galaxies

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Best view yet of merging galaxies in distant Universe

Hubble goes Sherlock Holmes

Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and many other telescopes on the ground and in space, an international team of astronomers has obtained the best view yet of a collision that took place between two galaxies when the Universe was only half its current age. They enlisted the help of a galaxy-sized magnifying glass to reveal otherwise invisible detail. These new studies of the galaxy H-ATLAS J142935.3-002836 have shown that this complex and distant object looks like the well-known local galaxy collision, the Antennae Galaxies.

The famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes used a magnifying lens to reveal barely visible but important evidence. Astronomers are now combining the power of many telescopes on Earth and in space with a vastly larger form of lens to study a case of vigorous star formation in the early Universe.

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Zooming in on a gravitationally lensed galaxy merger in the distant Universe

This video takes the viewer deep into an apparently sparsely occupied region of the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin). Here at the centre, looking like many other faint spots, is a remarkable object, a gravitationally lensed view of a distant galaxy merger.

Credit: NASA/ESA/W. M. Keck Observatory/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Music: movetwo

Source: ESA Hubble Site

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Artist's impression of gravitational lensing of a distant merger

This artist's impression shows how the effect of gravitational lensing by an intervening galaxy magnifies, brightens and distorts the appearance of a remote merging galaxy far behind it.

The viewpoint of the observer moves sideways so that that the distant galaxy merger appears first to one side, where it is faint, and then appears right behind the foreground object and is dramatically magnified and its total apparent brightness increases.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & ESO/M. Kornmesser

Source: ESA Hubble Site

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The universe is truly an amazing place. Cheers Waspie