This Hubble Space Telescope image features two merging galaxies in the VV-689 system, nicknamed the Angel Wing. Unlike chance alignments of galaxies, which only appear to overlap when viewed from our vantage point on Earth, the two galaxies in VV-689 are in the midst of a collision. The galactic interaction has left the VV-689 system almost completely symmetrical, giving the impression of a vast set of galactic wings.
“Zoo Gems,” interesting galaxies from
the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project is a crowdsourced program
and relies on hundreds of thousands of volunteers to classify galaxies and help
astronomers wade through a deluge of data from robotic telescopes. In the
process, volunteers discovered a gallery of weird and wonderful galaxy types,
some not previously studied. A similar, project called Radio Galaxy Zoo:
LOFAR is using the same crowdsourcing approach to locate supermassive
black holes in distant galaxies.
Image
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel; Acknowledgment: J. Schmidt
Text Credit: ESA
Source: An Angel Wing
in Space | NASA
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