This is a picture of a galaxy with a peculiar S-shape. It has a bright milky-white core at the center. Twin arms of blue stars wrap around the core. One arm looks particularly stretched out due to the gravitational tidal pull of a neighboring galaxy. Bright, young, whitish star clusters are strung along the arm like a string of pearls. They formed as a result of the collision process.

Hubble Captures Galaxy AM 1054-325

Galaxy AM 1054-325 has been distorted into an S-shape from a normal pancake-like spiral shape by the gravitational pull of a neighboring galaxy, seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image. A consequence of this is that newborn clusters of stars form along a stretched-out tidal tail for thousands of light-years, resembling a string of pearls. They form when knots of gas gravitationally collapse to create about 1 million newborn stars per cluster.

Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, Jayanne English (University of Manitoba)
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Image CreditNASA, ESA, STScI, Jayanne English (University of Manitoba)
Size640x630px