Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)

MCG+12-02-001 consists of a pair of galaxies visibly affected by gravitational interaction as material is flung out in opposite directions. A large galaxy can be seen at the top of the frame and a smaller galaxy resembling an erupting volcano is at the bottom. The bright core of this galaxy emerges from the summit of the "volcano". MCG+12-02-001 is a luminous infrared system that radiates with more than a hundred billion times the luminosity of our Sun. It is located some 200 million light-years away from Earth toward the constellation of Cassiopeia, the Seated Queen. 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.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0810bm/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License