An incredible photo of two huge galaxies merging has been captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

About 570 million light-years from Earth, the breathtaking image depicts a twisted spiral galaxy named NGC 6040 slowly colliding with another spiral galaxy named LEDA 59642.
In a blog post, NASA describes the ensuing “monster merger” as “Arp 122.” It may eventually form a unique structure of gas, dust, and dark matter in a matter of hundreds of millions of years.

The process is extremely sluggish, even though it appears to be the galactic equivalent of an automobile accident. Consider the Milky Way, which is headed straight for a collision with the nearby Andromeda Galaxy. However, it won’t really collide with it for another 4 billion years, or roughly the duration of Earth’s current lifespan.
For a very long time, astronomers have examined merging galaxies in the universe. Astronomers believe huge elliptical galaxies like Cygnus A evolved because merging of two galaxies often results in the production of one considerably more massive one.

The Harvard Center for Astrophysics estimates that five to twenty-five percent of all galaxies are undergoing galactic mergers, and that gravitational interactions are most likely responsible for the wide variety of shapes that these mergers take.

“It would be fascinating to know what Arp 122 will look like once this collision is complete,” according to NASA’s update, “but that will not happen for a long, long time.”