admin The Hubble Space Telescope, a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), has captured an image of two overlapping spiral galaxies, SDSS J115331 and LEDA 2073461.
More than a billion light-years away from our planet, these galaxies appear to collide in images. However, there is no evidence that the two galaxies are actually interacting, so this could just be a coincidence. Nevertheless, Hubble has managed to take numerous images of other galaxies that do interact.
This particular image is part of a large collection of observations made by Hubble as part of the Galactic Zoo project. Launched in 2007, the Galactic Zoo is a large-scale citizen science initiative based on the collaborative efforts of hundreds of thousands of volunteers classifying galaxies imaged by robotic telescopes. These volunteers are often the first to observe these objects as well.
During the course of the original Galactic Zoo project, volunteers discovered a variety of unique galaxies, including his rare three-armed spiral galaxy and colliding ring galaxies. The project coordinator requested Hubble observation time to study the most unusual galaxies discovered during the project. In keeping with the crowdsourced nature of the project, the list of goals was selected by public vote.
