This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is likely the best of an extremely distant galaxy known as LEDA 3087775.
This Hubble image shows the elliptical galaxy LEDA 3087775. In this galaxy, some ribbons of dust notably obscure parts of the conglomerated galaxy’s central, bluish region; those dust lanes could be remnants of the spiral arms of the recently departed galaxies. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.
LEDA 3087775, also known as SDSS J162702.55+432833.9 or 2MASX J16270254+4328340, is a faint and diffuse elliptical galaxy. It lies approximately 500 million light-years away in the constellation Hercules.
The galaxy is a member of Abell 2151 (also known as the Hercules cluster), a cluster of about 250 galaxies.
According to astronomers, LEDA 3087775 is likely the aftermath of an ancient galactic collision.
Two Milky Way-like spirals swirled together for millions of years.
In such mergers, the original galaxies are often stretched and pulled apart as they wrap around a common center of gravity.
When galaxies collide, a fresh burst of star formation typically takes place as gas clouds mash together.
At this point, LEDA 3087775 has a blue hue, but the color does not mean it’s cold: it’s a result of the intense heat of infant blue-white stars.
Those stars do not last long, and after several billion years the reddish hues of aging smaller stars dominate an elliptical galaxy’s spectrum.
This wide-field image shows the galaxy LEDA 3087775 among the foreground stars. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.
This color image of LEDA 3087775 was made from separate exposures taken in the visible region of the spectrum with Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3, or WFC3.
A version of the image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Competition by contestant Judy Schmidt.
