Hubble continues to provide exciting images of space despite the arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA and the European Space Agency have released a Hubble image of the Arp Madur 417-391 collision. A galaxy some 670 million light-years away, a gravitational tug of war has created a strange ring shape, with the nuclei of two galaxies relatively close together and the stellar “columns” forming a circle.
The telescope captured the merger with the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which has helped reveal strange galaxies and even dark matter. Researchers are using the orbits to catalog follow-up observations for the much newer James Webb Telescope, which has sometimes been used jointly with Hubble to study space objects, Engadget reports.
You may not see HST driving these discoveries for much longer. The telescope has suffered a number of system failures in recent years and is expected to come down to Earth as early as 2030 if there are no interventions.
While NASA and SpaceX consider raising Hubble’s orbit to keep it going, longevity is not guaranteed, and this galactic collapse could mark one of the telescope’s final migrations, even if there are years left in space on the observatory.