London: It can be called celestial tango -- two vast galaxies performing intricate dance almost 300 million light years from the Earth. The image, captured by the Hubble space telescope, shows that with the arm of one galaxy wrapped gently around the body of the other, the pair are slowly swinging around in a graceful performance choreographed by gravity.

The two galaxies are vast clouds of stars and gas and collectively known as Arp 87. Each of the two galaxies contains billions of stars and both are spiral shaped. According to the image, stars, gas and dust are flowing from the larger galaxy on the right, forming an arm which envelopes its smaller neighbour. "The resolution in the Hubble image shows exquisite detail and fine structure that was not observable when Arp 87 was first discovered in the 1970's," the Daily Mail reported today, quoting a spokesman for Nasa as saying.

In fact, Arp 87 was originally discovered by astronomer Halton Arp in the 1970s. "Some merging galaxies have the highest levels of star formation we can find anywhere in the nearby universe," said the spokesman. The dancing galaxies is just the latest in a long line of spectacular space pictures captured by the Hubble but the shapes of both galaxies has also been distorted over billions of years by their gravitational interaction with each other. Since its launch on a space shuttle in 1990, the orbiting telescope has sent back pictures of our system, vast star nurseries, far distant stars and remote galaxies, invisible from the Earth.

Source : PTI