From our moon to the neighboring planets to the most distant galaxies, space is a wonder to behold. Thanks to the social media profiles of the space agencies and the astronauts, we often get a glimpse of the dazzling world that lies beyond ours.
In a recent post, NASA shared a photograph of two galaxies engaged in a ‘delicate’ dance. The photograph was captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
In the shot, two galaxies could be seen interacting with each other. The one below, named NGC 5953 by NASA, gently tugged to the one above, named NGC 5954, as if extending arms towards it. As informed by NASA, this dance occurred more than 100 million lightyears away from the Earth.
The two spiral galaxies are so intertwined together that the astronauts have given them a common name — Arp 91.
However, it is possible that this might be the only form we could experience of these two spiral galaxies tango-ing together in this lifetime. “They take place over hundreds of millions of years, so we should not expect Arp 91 to look any different over the course of our lifetimes!,” said NASA.
NASA further informed that although the shapes of the dancing galaxies appear different, they were in fact spiral. The difference in the shape occurred due to the orientation difference in respect to Earth. Besides that, astronomers believe that such massive collisions can even lead to the birth of a whole new galaxy, which they call it as elliptical galaxies.
Astronomy enthusiasts were left mesmerised by the beauty of the cosmic dance of the two galaxies.
One user wrote, “This is just beyond beautiful!” While another user wrote, “Absolutely breath-taking!!”
One user wrote, “This is extraordinary. Imagine seeing this happen in person.”
While another user commented, “I love getting lost in thought about the planets and space.”
