Hubble Interacting Galaxy NGC 5331

NGC 5331 is a pair of interacting galaxies beginning to hold their arms . There is a blue trail which appears in the image flowing to the right of the system. NGC 5331 is very bright in the infrared, with about a hundred billion times the luminosity of the Sun. It is located in the constellation Virgo, the Maiden, about 450 million light-years away from Earth.

This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on 24th April 2008.

About the data

HST Proposal: 10592 A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)