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Hubble Captures ‘Ghostly Face’ in ‘Titanic’ Smashup Between Two Galaxies

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The Hubble Space Telescope spotted a "ghostly face" in space, which is known as Arp-Madore 2026-424. (Photo Credit: NASA / ESA / J. Dalcanton / B.F. Williams, and M. Durbin - University of Washington)

Hubble is getting into the Halloween spirit: The space telescope snapped an image of a “creepy space creature” with piercing eyes and a haunting face.

The frightening object is not an otherworldly creature though: According to NASA, the system is catalogued as Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) and it’s the result of a “titanic” smashup between two giant galaxies.

What’s creepy about the Hubble image is that it looks like it’s staring right at us. Each “eye” represents the bright core of a galaxy, one of which barreled into another. A ring of young blue stars forms the “ghostly face” outline, while other new star clusters merge into a nose and mouth.

Galaxy collisions are not unusual occurrences, however, most of them aren’t head-on collisions that may have formed AM 2026-424. This turbulent smashup provides the system with an arresting “ring” structure for a brief period of time (approximately 100 million years). A violent collision between two galaxies stretched the galaxies’ disks of gas, dust, and stars in an outward direction.

The galaxies’ two central bulges of stars also reveal strange comparisons: They make the eyes look like they’re the same size, demonstrating that the two galaxies may have had nearly equal proportions when they crashed into each other, unlike common collisions that involve larger neighbors consuming smaller galaxies.

Both galaxies are expected to merge completely in roughly 1 to 2 billion years.

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