NGC 6670
Date: 24 April 2008
Satellite: Hubble Space Telescope
Depicts: NGC 6670
Copyright: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)
NGC 6670 is a gorgeous pair of overlapping edge-on galaxies. Scientists believe that NGC 6670 has already experienced at least one close encounter and is now in the early stages of a second. The nuclei of the two galaxies are approximately 50 000 light-years apart. NGC 6670 glows in the infrared with more than a hundred thousand million times the luminosity of our Sun and is thought to be entering a starburst phase. The pair is located some 400 million light-years away from Earth.
This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on 24th April 2008.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
