Are These 2 Galaxies Colliding!?
The short answer is no.
Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) captured an image of the spiral galaxy NGC 105. NGC 105 is located roughly 215 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces. And while the image above shows that it is colliding with another galaxy, it actually isn’t. Instead, that galaxy is even farther away and still is somewhat unknown to astronomers.
These conjunctions are very frequent in astronomy, where celestial objects seem close together, but are in fact thousands or millions of light-years away. To measure the distance and confirm that these two galaxies aren’t colliding, astronomers are utilizing Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 observations. By measuring how bright they are from Earth, astronomers and scientists can predict their distance from Earth.
Astronomers were looking at galaxies including NGC 105 to measure how fast the universe is expanding. However, the results don't agree with the productions by the accepted cosmological model, which may have been caused by measurement errors. But it also goes to show maybe we need to upgrade our technology. Luckily, with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, we may learn more about the early expansion of the universe.
Comments
Post a Comment