Discovering the Mystery of the Universe

This photo shows the HCG-87 galaxies in the constellation of Gemini. Its distance from our earth is approximately 400 million light-years. Near the center of the picture, there is a large spiral galaxy with fuzzy-like elliptical galaxies on its right side, are also identified as group of HCG-87 galaxies. After a close examination, these galaxies are found quite distance away from the HCG-87 galaxies.

These two galaxies are inter-related in terms of their mutual gravitational pulls that affect their structure and evolution direction. This image came from the Gemini Observatory Station located in the Southern part of Chile. Before the existence of Hubble Site, this place is served as the most ideal place for the galaxies observation.

Hubble Space Telescope

This space picture is taken from Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In some occasions, galaxies tend to form in groups. For example, our Milk Way is a group of one. A small group of small galaxies that compact around the universe may raise the attention from the astronomers. They pay attention to those small galaxies as they will gradually destruct themselves out from the aerospace. In fact, HCG-87 galaxies in the past 100 million years had gradually extended and evolved around the center of the universe due to their mutual attraction. Despite the gravitational pull, the dust collides with the gas, resulting in the occurrence of the star formation with bright beam to actively provide substances to the center of the universe. HCG-87 constitutes of three galaxies. We can see these galaxies that appear in few bright stars. This picture was taken with a Hubble Space Telescope in July, 1999, enabling the in-depth observation towards the evolution and assembling of HCG-87 galaxies.

This is a very unusual mixture form of blue nebula (extended astronomical object) composes of red hot gas and dark dust in the orbit around the center region of the constellation of Sagittarius A. This was an image taken with blue ray lens of HST. This infrared image shows that the center part where nebula is active in is actually a black hole that forms up the spiral nebura with its mass of billion times of the sun. The constellation of Sagittarius A is obviously the result of two galaxies collision and at the same time, the residues due to collision are continuously being consumed by the center black hole. Astronomers believe that activities take place in the center black hole will produce radioactive rays. It is fortunate that it is 10 million light-years away from us, making it as a laboratory for astronomers to explore the mystery of the tremendous energy in the universe.