Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2018

30 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2018 SPACE CHRONICLES Cosmic collision lights up the darkness by NASA/ESA T his image, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), both installed on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Tele- scope, shows the peculiar galaxy NGC 3256. The galaxy is about 100 million light-years from Earth and is the result of a past galactic merger, which created its distorted appearance. As such, NGC 3256 provides an ideal target to investi- gate starbursts that have been triggered by galaxy mergers. [ESA/Hubble, NASA]