The Hubble Space Telescope remains a wonderful tool that stores an impressive amount of data about the universe. Despite having been replaced by the powerful James Webb Space Telescope, the observatory of the NASA and ESA records surprising events like these three galaxies interacting with each other, about 500 million light years from Earth.
At first, when scientists analyzed the data, they thought NASA and ESA’s Hubble had captured the pair of interacting galaxies known as Arp-Madore 2339-661. And yes he did. But when they put a clinical eye on the information they found the peculiarity that this group could be stranger than it seems at first glance, since here there are three interacting galaxies, not just two.
According to the review POT On its official site, the two clearly defined galaxies are NGC 7733 (smaller, lower right) and NGC 7734 (larger, upper left). The third galaxy is currently known as NGC 7733N and is visible if you look closely at the upper arm of NGC 7733.
According to what can be seen in the images, you can see a knot-shaped structure, which shines with a different color than the arm and is obscured by dark dust.
The experts explain that after analyzing the velocities of the directions involved, it reveals that this knot has a considerable additional redshift. So, that tells them that it should be a separate galaxy and not a dependency of the galaxy NGC 7733.
“The three galaxies are located quite close to each other, about 500 million light years from Earth, in the Tucana constellation, and, as this image shows, they interact gravitationally with each other,” NASA published on its website and social networks.