PIA10390: NGC 520

Mission: Hubble Space Telescope Spacecraft: Hubble Space Telescope Instrument: Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 Product Size: 3271 samples x 1828 lines Produced By: Space Telescope Science Institute Full-Res TIFF: PIA10390.tif (17.94 MB) Full-Res JPEG: PIA10390.jpg (736.3 kB)

Original Caption Released with Image: Galaxies Gone Wild! Poster Version Unannotated Poster Version Hubble Interacting Galaxies Poster NGC 520 is the product of a collision between two disk galaxies that started 300 million years ago. It exemplifies the middle stages of the merging process: the disks of the parent galaxies have merged together, but the nuclei have not yet coalesced. It features an odd-looking tail of stars and a prominent dust lane that runs diagonally across the center of the image and obscures the galaxy. NGC 520 is one of the brightest galaxy pairs on the sky, and can be observed with a small telescope toward the constellation of Pisces, the Fish, having the appearance of a comet. It is about 100 million light-years away and about 100,000 light-years across. The galaxy pair is included in Arp's catalog of peculiar galaxies as ARP 157. This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on 24th April 2008. It was taken by the telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, which was designed and built by JPL. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and B. Whitmore (STScI)