NASA / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured a peculiar image of galaxy NGC 2146 located approximately 70 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis. What makes it so peculiar? It has one spiral arm that appears to be looped in front of the galaxy’s bright core.
In this image, we can see a bright white galactic core partially obscured by a spiral arm with black dust and glowing orange star formation regions. We also observe distant stars scattered throughout black space.Just imagine the immense gravitational force required to twist NGC 2146’s spiral arm out of its natural shape, but it is most likely being caused by a neighboring galaxy gravitationally disturbing the galaxy and distorting the orbits of many of its stars.
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This interaction likely also contributes to the high rate of star formation happening here in this Hubble Classic view. The gravitational disruption compresses hydrogen-rich clouds of gas and dust, triggering starbirth,” said NASA.
