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The NGC 2276 galaxy, recently imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, had previously made it to the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, P. Sell)
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning new image of a distant spiral galaxy deformed by gravitational tug of its neighbor.
The spiral galaxy, called NGC 2276, is located in the constellation Cepheus some 120 million light-years away from Earth's sun. In a wide-field image from Hubble, it can be seen together with its smaller neighbor NGC 2300. The gravitational pull of the neighbor galaxy has twisted the spiral structure of NGC 2276 into a lopsided shape, earning it a spot in the The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, a catalog of the weirdest stellar conglomerates originally published in 1966.
As the neghboring NGC 2300 exerts a gravitational force on one side of NGC 2276, the outermost parts of the larger galaxy's spiral arms stretch out further from its center, giving NGC 2276 its asymmetric look.
Hubble telescope spies lopsided spiral galaxy deformed by gravity
This galaxy is so strange it made it to the list of the Universe’s greatest weirdos.
www.space.com
