The Hubble space telescope, of NASA and the European Space Agency, has come across a bridge of stars that connects two galaxies: it extends for 250 thousand light years and must have been formed following a slightly too close passage between the two cosmic objects.
The evanescent star bridge was captured thanks to an image taken by Hubble of one of the three galaxies that form the group known as Arp 295, the largest within a vast cluster of galaxies located about 270 million light years away in the direction of the constellation Aquarius.
When galaxies pass close enough to disturb each other, they are called interacting galaxies.
These are interactions that take place over billions of years, and repeated close passages can also cause the two galaxies to merge, a phenomenon considered quite common: our Milky Way is also predicted to merge with the massive nearby Andromeda galaxy in about four billion years.
If the hypothesis is correct, the stars and gases contained in Andromeda will be visible to the naked eye in about three billion years.
Arp 295 is composed of three spiral galaxies, named with the letters A to C. Arp 295a is the protagonist of the Hubble photo, framed edge-on in the center of the image, and the faint bridge of stars that unites it is clearly visible to a distant galaxy that we cannot admire.
Arp 295c is also visible in the shot, with its small and brilliant blue spiral shot from the front, while the last member of the trio, Arp 295b, does not appear in the frame.
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