A STUNNING Nasa video lets viewers travel through deep space to look at five different galaxies.
The one-and-a-half-minute-long visualization was created using scientific data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
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NASA released the interactive video for the Hubble Telescope’s 32nd birthday this past April.
The collection of five galaxies highlighted in the clip is known as the Hickson Compact Group 40.
Located in the constellation Hydra about 300 million light-years away, the cluster comprises three spiral galaxies, one elliptical galaxy, and one lenticular galaxy.
At the start of the video, NASA locates the Hickson Compact Group 40 in its respective constellation.
The video then zooms into an isolated patch of sky that hosts the five galaxies.
Finally, it shows a fly-through of each galaxy, illustrating how they are positioned in relation to each other.
Along with the interactive video, NASA recently shared a mind-blowing image (see above) of the five galaxies, which are unusually close together.
“Somehow, these different galaxies crossed paths in their evolution to create an exceptionally crowded and eclectic galaxy sampler,” NASA writes on its Hubblesite.
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“Caught in a leisurely gravitational dance, the whole group is so crowded that it could fit within a region of space that is less than twice the diameter of our Milky Way’s stellar disk.”
Another mind-blowing fact about these five galaxies is that in around one billion years, they will all merge together to form one giant elliptical galaxy.
Because of that, Hubble’s snapshot catches the galaxies at a very “special moment” in their lifetimes, the US space agency said.
While galaxy groupings are not uncommon, they’re normally found in the heart of the larger clusters.
However, these galaxies are “notably isolated in their own small patch of the universe,” NASA noted.
One potential reason for this abnormal occurrence is the high amount of dark matter present in the area.
“If they come close together, then the dark matter can form a big cloud within which the galaxies are orbiting,” NASA officials explained.
“As the galaxies plow through the dark matter, they feel a resistive force due to its gravitational effects. This slows their motion and makes the galaxies lose energy, so they fall together.”
Astronomers have observed the Hickson Compact Group 40 not only in visible light, but in radio, infrared, and X-ray wavelengths.
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