Hubble telescope finds galaxies that together form a ‘string of pearls’ | Science

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Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have come across a ‘pearl necklace’ of galaxies. The galaxies are connected by ‘strings’ of gas and stars. The whole stretches over thousands of light years, reports the space agency NASA.

It concerns twelve different galaxies that are connected by their tails. These tails are formed because the galaxies pull on each other with their gravity. This indicates that the galaxies will one day collide.

Thanks to the Hubble telescope, another 425 bundles of young stars have been found in the tails. Each cluster contains an estimated one million stars. Some of these are less than ten million years old and are therefore called baby stars.

According to NASA, the ‘string of pearls’ proves that a collision of galaxies is not actually a collision, but a merger. No stars are destroyed, but new stars are created.

“It’s surprising to find so many young objects in the tails. That tells us a lot about how galaxies form and can merge,” said lead researcher Michael Rodruck. “This process creates a new generation of stars that would otherwise never have existed.”