Hubble space telescope recently captured a collection of spiral galaxies located at a great distant from Earth. The beautiful stunning image released on Christmas Day comprises of massive galaxy known as NGC 1356. This spiral galaxy is the largest in Hubble’s latest festive image.
It can be spotted on the right side of the picture. Astronomer reveals that this galaxy is located at about 550 million light-years from Earth. It exists in the constellation Horologium (the clock). The image showed NGC 1356 surrounded by smaller galaxies of similar spiral morphologies.
A galaxy named LEDA 467699 can be seen above the main galaxy, while another galaxy named LEDA 95415 can be spotted on the left of the main galaxy. Another collection of stars named IC 1947 exists on the far left of the trio galaxies. The Hubble Space Telescope’s latest image shows the deceptive capabilities of space shots.
Even though these galaxies look like they are extremely close to the main galaxy NGC 1356, they are widely separated in the vast cosmos in reality. The image also reveals the effect of taking the three spatial dimensions of the universe and translating them into a 2D picture. It also reveals the powerful nature of the Hubble Space Telescope in capturing images of galaxies at a great distance.
What You should know about the festive image of these spiral galaxies
NGC 1356 is located about 500 million and 600 million light years away from Earth. The galaxy appears to be exchanging stars and gas with its neighbors separated by a great distance. Astronomers discovered that LEDA 95415 is about 840 million light years away from Earth. This implies that about 290 million light years exist between these two galaxies.
The massive distance separating NGC 1356 from LEDA 95415 is helping scientists to explain why LEDA 95415 appears much smaller in Hubble’s latest festive image than the massive NGC 1356. Scientists reveal that the two spiral galaxies are much closer to each other than they appear in size.
The Hubble festive image reveals that the two most distant galaxies are NGC 1356 (far right) and IC 1947 (far left). However, these galaxies are much closer in reality than they appear in just two dimensions. IC 1947 is located about 500 million light-years away from Earth, which is about a similar distance to NGC 1356.
What appears like a massive horizontal separation between two galaxies can also be spotted in the latest Hubble images. This separation is known as the angular distance and it equates to slightly more than 400,000 light-years. Astronomers suggest that this situation makes NGC 1356 and IC 1947 much closer to each other than NGC 1356 and LEDA 95415.
