Public Wants Hubble to Study Hugging Galaxies

By Nancy Atkinson - March 2, 2009 at 9:00 PM UTC | Extragalactic
hugging-galaxies.jpg

[/caption] NASA asked the public to vote on where they want the Hubble Space Telescope to be pointed in the "Hubble, You Decide" contest. Nearly 140,000 votes were cast online to help decide. And the winner is: a pair of interacting galaxies that look like they are hugging. Called Arp 274 (from the Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies) these two galaxies won over five other celestial candidates. The Hubble observations will be taken during the International Year of Astronomy's "100 Hours of Astronomy," taking place April 2 – 5. The full-color galaxy image will be released publicly during that time.

Drawn together by their gravity, the two galaxies are starting to interact. The spiral shapes of these galaxies are mostly intact, but evidence can be seen of the gravitational distortions they are creating within each other. When galaxies interact and merge together, the gas clouds inside them often form tremendous numbers of new stars.

According to NASA: "The new picture of Arp 274 promises to reveal intriguing never-before-seen details in the galactic grand slam."

We'll be sure to post the image when it is released.

Source: Hubblesite

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com