NASA’s hubble telescope captures stunning image of 120 million light years away ‘Lopsided’ Spiral Galaxy

Team Udayavani, Jun 6, 2021, 12:54 PM IST

Nasa’s 31-year-old Hubble Space Telescope has found a “lopsided” spiral galaxy that has been deformed by the gravitational tug of another nearby galaxy.

NASA shared the stunning image of the galaxy called “NGC 2276”, which is located in the constellation Cepheus, about 120 million light-years away from the Earth.

In the picture, dust of blue stars surrounds the yellowish core.

NASA captioned, “A neighbouring galaxy is gravitationally tugging on its disk of blue stars, pulling the stars on one side of the galaxy outward,” in the Instagram post. NASA said the spiral galaxy looks a bit lopsided because of the “galactic game of tug-of-war.”

 

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A post shared by Hubble Space Telescope (@nasahubble)

NASA in a statement on its website said that a bright hub of older yellowish stars normally lies directly in the centre of most spiral galaxies, and added: “but the bulge in NGC 2276 looks offset to the upper left”.

NASA said, “In reality, a neighbouring galaxy to the right of NGC 2276 (NGC 2300, not seen in the image) is gravitationally tugging on its disk of blue stars, pulling the stars on one side of the galaxy outward to distort the galaxy’s normal fried-egg appearance.”

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA.