A faint gas “bridge” connects two colliding galaxies in a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The Arp 107 system contains a pair of galaxies that are in the process of merging. Located about 465 million light-years from Earth, the galactic duo is connected by a thin stream of dust and gas.

Hubble, a joint mission led by NASA and the European Space Agency, took a new look at Arp 107 with an improved survey camera. The larger galaxy shown on the left of the image has a large spiral arm twisting around the galactic core. This cosmic region, known as the Seyfert Galaxy, hosts an active galactic nucleus.

“Seyfert galaxies are remarkable in that, despite the enormous brightness of the active nucleus, radiation from the entire galaxy can be observed,” ESA said in a statement. said. “You can see this in this image, where the spiral rotations of the entire galaxy are clearly visible.”

Active galactic nuclei show an intense glow associated with matter falling into the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. In fact, the radiation emitted by an active galactic nucleus can exceed the combined light of each star in the host galaxy.

The bright spiral arm of the galaxy is dotted with bright nascent stars, born from an abundant source of material being absorbed from smaller matter. galaxies-satellite visible in the lower right corner of the image.

The smaller galaxy appears to have a bright core but has relatively faint spiral arms as it is absorbed by the larger galaxy. The stream of material connecting the merging galaxies hangs delicately beneath the vapor in the new Hubble image released by ESA on September 18.

Arp 107 belongs to a group of galaxies known as the Atlas of Strange Galaxies compiled by Halton Arp in 1966. The new Hubble photo was taken as part of a larger attempt to observe poorly understood members of the Arp catalogue.

“Part of the aim of the observing program was to provide the public with images of these magnificent, hard-to-define galaxies,” ESA said in a statement. said.