The Hubble telescope has recorded an image of two spiral galaxies crashing into one another and merging in an ultimately destructive event.
The typically beautiful Hubble shot - a blue and orange blur of light burning bright in the black abyss, surrounded by other celestial bodies - is of the IRAS 14348-1447, a galaxy collision discovered by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite in the late 1980s.
Nasa and the European Space Agency has now released this latest image of the collision, located more than a billion light years from Earth. It depicts the spectacular amounts of energy the galaxies are emitting - according to the space agencies, more than 95 per cent of that energy is at far-infrared wavelengths.
According to data gathered when it was first discovered, IRAS 14348-1447 has a total energy emission 100 times greater than the Milky Way thanks to the massive amounts of molecular gas present. The “dynamical processes” that gas fuel creates, as it “interacts and moves around”, in turn creates the swirling tails that give the galaxies their name. It is the result of two gas-rich, incredibly bright and high-energy galaxies crashing and burning into one another.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
