17/02/2023
Our features Arp 248 — also known as Wild's Triplet, which lies around 200 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Virgo. The two large spiral galaxies visible in this image — which flank a smaller, unrelated background spiral galaxy — seem to be connected by a luminous bridge. This elongated stream of stars and interstellar dust is known as a tidal tail, and it was formed by the mutual gravitational attraction of the two foreground galaxies.
Hubble used its Advanced Camera for Surveys to scour this menagerie of eccentric galaxies in search of promising candidates for future observations with James Webb Space Telescope
Read more about how this image was obtained here: http://ow.ly/45Qb50MSLun
📷 ESA - European Space Agency / Hubble Space Telescope & NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration / Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA / J. Dalcanton
