Photo credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope used both its Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 to capture a group of three galaxies, collectively known as NGC 7764A, that resembles Star Trek’s USS Enterprise starship. At first glance, it appears as if the two galaxies in the upper right of the image are interacting with one another, while their long trails of stars and gas extending make it seem like they’ve been struck at great speed.
However, despite appearances, the galaxies are not interacting with each other, as interactions between them occur very long time periods, and rarely do they collide head-on with each another. By pure coincidence, the collective interaction between these galaxies may have caused the two on the upper right to form a shape, which from our own perspective looking through Hubble, resembles the USS Enterprise.
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The three galaxies are individually referred as NGC 7764A1, NGC 7764A2, and NGC 7764A3. This rather haphazard naming makes more sense when we consider that many astronomical catalogs were compiled well over 100 years ago, long before modern technology made standardizing scientific terminology much easier. As it is, many astronomical objects have several different names, or might have names that are so similar to other objects’ names that they cause confusion,” said NASA.
