Hubble captures two galaxies separated by 'only' 40,000 light years

April 5 () –

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of two galaxies interacting due to gravity, to the point that only They are 40,000 light years away, not much in cosmic terms.

NGC 5996, the large spiral galaxy, and NGC 5994, its smaller companion, at the bottom left of the image, are located 160 million light years from Earth and form the selective group of galaxies Arp 72.

As a comparison of the small separation between the two, the distance between the Milky Way and its closest independent galactic neighbor, Andromeda, is about 2.5 million light years. Alternatively, the distance between the Milky Way and its largest and brightest satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (satellite galaxies orbit another galaxy), It is about 162,000 light years.

Taking this into account and the fact that NGC 5996 is roughly comparable in size to the Milky Way, it is not surprising that NGC 5996 and NGC 5994, separated by only about 40,000 light years, interact with each other. In fact, the interaction likely distorted NGC 5996's spiral shape.

It also caused the formation of a very long, faint tail of stars and gas leading away from NGC 5996, to the top right of the image. This “tidal tail” is a common phenomenon that appears when galaxies interact closely and is visible in other Hubble images of interacting galaxies, NASA reports.