Merging galaxies in the distant Universe through a gravitational magnifying glass
Date: 26 August 2014
Satellite: Hubble Space Telescope
Depicts: H-ATLAS J142935.3-002836
Copyright: NASA/ESA/ESO/W. M. Keck Observatory
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and many other telescopes on the ground and in space have been used to obtain the best view yet of a collision that took place between two galaxies when the Universe was only half its current age. The astronomers enlisted the help of a galaxy-sized magnifying glass to reveal otherwise invisible detail.
These new studies of the galaxy H-ATLAS J142935.3-002836 have shown that this complex and distant object looks surprisingly like the well-known local galaxy collision, the Antennae Galaxies.
In this picture, which combines views from Hubble and the Keck-II telescope on Hawaii (using adaptive optics), you can see a foreground galaxy that is acting as the gravitational lens. The galaxy resembles how our home galaxy, the Milky Way, would appear if seen edge-on. But around this galaxy there is an almost complete ring – the smeared out image of a star-forming galaxy merger far beyond.
