Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. The aptly named Cartwheel Galaxy is actually about 500 million light years distant, its suggestive shape created by a head-on collision with a smaller galaxy . Researchers studying this disrupted galaxy using Hubble Space Telescope data recently discovered immense gaseous structures with heads a few hundred light years across and tails thousands of light years long. Their shape, like a boat's bow wave, was probably created by the dense clouds moving through less dense material.
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