The NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has sent remarkable image galactic hybrid at last stages of its life. The galaxy named UGC 12591 is hybrid of lenticular and spiral galaxy which is located nearly 400 light years away from Earth. The hybrid galaxy is located in the westernmost region of the Pisces–Perseus Supercluster which is also one of the largest known structures in the cosmos.
What’s striking is that the galactic hybrid is extremely massive and contain several billion times the mass of the Sun. Also, researchers estimated it to at least four times heavier than our galaxy Milky Way. It also whirls round extremely quickly, rotating at speeds of up to 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) per hour.
Astronomers have observed UGC 12591 with the iconic Hubble Space Telescope (HST) over a long period of time and found that the mass and size of the galaxy simply grew over time. Scientists explained that the galaxy might have collided with gigantic galaxies in the past to become such massive in size.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
The Hubble space telescope was launched in 1990 and since then it is the largest telescope in space. HST has helped scientists in exploring the deepest corners of the universe and has beamed back millions of stunning shots in its entire career. However, HST will be replaced by the James Webb Telescope in 2018 as it has thrice larger lens when compared to HST.