Hubble inspects two galaxies connected by a luminous bridge

This picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble House Telescope reveals two of the galaxies within the galactic triplet Arp 248—also referred to as Wild’s Triplet—which lies round 200 million light-years from Earth within the constellation Virgo.

The 2 giant spiral galaxies seen on this picture—which flank a smaller, unrelated background spiral galaxy—seem linked by a luminous bridge. This elongated stream of stars and interstellar dust is called a tidal tail, and it shaped by the mutual gravitational attraction of the 2 foreground galaxies.

This remark comes from a mission which delves into two galleries of bizarre galaxies: “A Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations,” compiled by astronomers Halton Arp and Barry Madore, and the “Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies,” compiled by Halton Arp. Every assortment comprises a menagerie of spectacularly peculiar galaxies, together with interacting galaxies akin to Arp 248, in addition to one- or three-armed spiral galaxies, galaxies with shell-like buildings, and a wide range of different space oddities.

Hubble’s Superior Digital camera for Surveys scoured this assortment of eccentric galaxies searching for promising candidates for future observations with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb House Telescope, the Atacama Massive Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and Hubble itself. With the wealth of astronomical objects to check within the evening sky, tasks akin to this, which information future observations, are a invaluable funding of observing time.