Cosmic Jellyfish Galaxy Spotted In Hubble Telescope’s New Images

800 million light-years away from Earth is a galaxy that resembles something one might find on a day out at the beach: a jellyfish.
 
Jellyfish galaxies are classified as such for their trails of stars seeping out of them that look much like cosmic tentacles. These tendrils are formed via ram pressure stripping, which happens when diffuse gas hits through clusters. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), “as galaxies plow through this tenuous gas, it acts like a headwind, stripping gas and dust from the galaxy and creating the trailing streamers that prominently adorn JW100.”

JW100 is the solar system pictured by Hubble in a recent round of images sent back to Earth. The render depicts an ethereal view of blue, pink, and purple stars, gas, and dust streaming behind like celestial tentacles as it spins through the universe.
 
Hubble snapped the image with its Wide Field Camera 3 as part of a larger study to understand star formations in systems like JW100. 
 
The rest of the image is filled with the other nebulas that comprise the Pegasus cluster, including an elliptical galaxy called IC 5338.
 
Recently, NASA’s other telescope, James Webb, managed to capture yet another cosmic phenomenon that resembled an Earthly object; a star on the verge of exploding and emitting pink dust, like a cherry blossom in the sky.
 
Space remains filled with wonders, and pictures like these remind us how everything in the universe is connected.
 
 
 
[via Space.com and Geo News, image via ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team]