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The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning image of a pair of colliding galaxies that have been distorted into a colossal, glowing ring of stars by the intense gravitational pull between them.
The entangled galaxies, collectively known as Arp-Madore 417-391, are located about 670 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, visible in the southern hemisphere.
The new image was taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which is specifically designed to detect galaxies from the early universe, and was released Nov. 21 by the European Space Agency (ESA).
“The two galaxies have been deformed by gravity and twisted into a colossal ring, nestling the cores of the two galaxies next to each other,” ESA representatives wrote online. (opens in new tab).
Related: Stunningly perfect ‘Einstein ring’ captured by James Webb Space Telescope
The cosmic collision is the latest in the Arp-Madore Catalog of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations, an archive of more than 6,000 images of unusual galaxies observed in the southern sky.
In June 2019, Hubble spotted another galaxy merger known as Arp-Madore 2026-424, which produced a similar but imperfect ring structure resembling a ghost’s face.
Ring structures in galaxy mergers are extremely rare and only form when the two colliding galaxies collide head-on instead of being slowly pulled together by gravity, according to NASA (opens in new tab).
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The rings are only temporary and last about 100 million years. After that, the stars gradually retreat into their parent galaxies, which eventually merge into a single new galaxy between 1 billion and 2 billion years later, according to NASA.
About 100 galaxy merger rings are known, but very few form such a perfect circle as the newly broken Arp-Madore 417-391. The symmetrical shape of the new ring is likely because the colliding galaxies were about the same size, suggested by the roughly similar size and brightness of the two galactic centers in the image. However, the exact mechanics of how the ring formed is still unknown.
Arp-Madore 417-391 has been flagged as a possible future target for the James Webb Space Telescope by image, according to ESA. Therefore, we may not have to wait long to learn more about this delightful cosmic disk.
