NASA shared a video taken by its Solar Dynamic Observatory showing dark patches on the sun, giving the illusion of a smile. (Credit: @NASASun / Twitter)
Scientists at NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) released an image on Friday showcasing a pair of merging galaxies.
The galaxy merger, , is located 671 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.
Captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, it is the result of two galaxies that were distorted by gravity and twisted together into a ring.
Their cores were left nestled side by side.
The galaxy merger Arp-Madore 417-391 steals the spotlight in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The Arp-Madore catalogue is a collection of particularly peculiar galaxies spread throughout the southern sky and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies as well as more spectacular colliding galaxies. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, J. Dalcanton)
The telescope used its Advanced Camera for Surveys to snap this scene and the ESA said that the instrument is optimized to in the ancient universe.
The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of strange galaxies spread across the southern sky.
Arp-Madore 417-391 close up (Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, J. Dalcanton)
The photo comes from a selection of Hubble observations that are designed to create a list of intriguing targets for follow-up observations with the and other ground-based telescopes.
An astronaut aboard the space shuttle Atlantis captured this image of the Hubble Space Telescope on May 19, 2009. (NASA)
Astronomers chose a list of previously unobserved galaxies for Hubble to inspect.