The James Webb Space Telescope may be the “human eye in the sky” in the future, but the good Hubble Telescope still has a place in our hearts. Hubble has been sending images of distant stars and galaxies to Earth for three decades. Space telescopes never cease to amaze us, have fun, and appreciate the endless beauty of the universe.
The latest image clicked by Hubble is the same. While it may not be as exciting as a galactic collision, this image does tell us about our future.
The image shows an elliptical galaxy called NGC 474. It is located 100 million light years from Earth. It is about two and a half times larger than the Milky Way. Galaxies may not have a beautiful spiral structure like ours. It looks like a light mist or dark fog. But studying NGC 474 is so important because it gives us a glimpse into the future.
As much as we love our Milky Way, it is on a collision course with a larger galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy is racing toward the Milky Way at unimaginable speed.
We can breathe a sigh of relief because a galactic collision will occur billions of years from now. This galactic collision may not be as scary as imagined in the movies. But the colossal gravity of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will pull matter out of the cosmic dance partners. After a merging process that would last billions of years, the two galaxies would lose their spiral shape and the resulting “Milkdromeda” galaxy would be an ellipse like the NGC 474 Hubble clicked!
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