NASA captures magnificent image of two galaxies smashing together

Pictures of galaxies out in space have inspired people since long. This time NASA has not only released a breathtaking picture of a galaxy, but two galaxies smashing together.

A new image taken from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showed the phenomenon of two galaxies, some 230 million light years away, pulled together by gravity, in process of colliding into each other to become one.

The galaxy battle was first spotted back in 1784 by astronomer William Herschel, where he though it to be just one large galaxy with abnormal round shape, according to NASA. Years after it was known that the NGC 6052 was not one galaxy but actually two individual galaxies in their last stages of merging. They were so tightly packed that their own galactic edges were faded.

As the two galaxies grow closer, the individual stars in them will be thrown out of their orbits and placed on completely new paths. “Since the stars produce the light we see, the ‘galaxy’ now appears to have a highly chaotic shape,” explained the European Space Agency.

“Eventually, this new galaxy will settle down into a stable shape, which may not resemble either of the two original galaxies.”

Meanwhile, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, will face a similar doom as well with its nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. Luckily, scientists believe that this collision is not expected to happen for at least another four billion years.