HONG KONG: A group of four galaxies — including a galactic cannibal — are glowing brightly in deep space.
The Hubble Space Telescope snapped an image (above) of the quartet of galactic neighbors. Named NGC 839, NGC 838, NGC 835, and NGC 833 (from left to right), they are part of a larger group of seven galaxies known as the Hickson Compact Group 16 (HCG 16).
“They shine brightly with their glowing golden centers and wispy tails of gas, set against a background dotted with much more distant galaxies,” a Hubble spokesperson wrote in a statement.
NGC 839 (on the far left of the image) shows signs of galactic cannibalism; the galaxy’s shape suggests that it merged with another galaxy sometime in the relatively recent past, Hubble said. Meanwhile, NGC 833 (on the far right) may have had its gas stripped by galaxy interactions at some point in its history.
HCG 16 isn’t the only one of its kind in the universe. These types of galactic neighborhoods were first classified in the 1980s, and contain some of the “densest concentrations of galaxies” in the yet-observed universe, according to Hubble.
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