Twenty-five years after being launched into space, the Hubble Space Telescope proves it is doing well as it continues to send stunning shots of the galaxy. And on June 18, the telescope showed four interesting galaxies, all in one shot.

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The Hubble Space Telescope, which has traveled more than three billion miles along a circular low Earth orbit, is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). It was launched on April 24, 1990, on the space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It is considered as one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built.

With a measurement of 13.3 meters, the Hubble has peered back into the very distant past to locations more than 13.4 billion light-years from Earth. And this 2015, Benchmark Reporter revealed the telescope captured four galaxies clustered together including a galactic cannibal. The galactic quartet is illuminating brightly deep in space.

"They shine brightly with their glowing golden centers and wispy tails of gas, set against a background dotted with much more distant galaxies," a Hubble spokesperson stated.

According to a release, the cosmic quartet - NGC 839, NGC 838, NGC 835 and NGC833 - is part of Hickson Compact Group 16, which comprises a total of seven galaxies. The Weather Network has learned that these seven galaxies in cluster fall into three categories: Starbursts, LINERs (Low-Ionization Nuclear Emission-line Regions) and Seyfert 2 galaxies.

As described, Starbursts produce new stars at higher rates than other galaxies. While LINERs contain heated gas at their cores that explode with radiation. The Seyfert 2 galaxies, on the other hand, have very bright cores when observed on non-visible wavelengths and have super-massive black holes. However, the Hubble said the cluster may even have been more numerous in the distant past.

"Hickson Compact Groups in particular, as classified by astronomer Paul Hickson in the 1980s, are surprisingly numerous, and are thought to contain an unusually high number of galaxies with strange properties and behaviours," Hubble stated in a release. "HCG 16 is certainly no exception. The galaxies within it are bursting with dramatic knots of star formation and intensely bright central regions."

Aside from the Hickson Compact Group 16, which is not unique in the universe, the Hubble Space Telescope has also captured a galactic cannibalism. As reported by Mashable, NGC 839 shows signs of galactic cannibalism since its shape suggests that it merged with another galaxy not too long ago, whereas the NGC 833 indicates that it may have its gas stripped by galaxy interactions at some point in its history.

While it is common to come across groups like Hickson Compact Groups, the newfound galaxies captured by the Hubble Space Telescope can be quite bizarre.

TagsHubble Space Telescope, Galaxy, outer space, Universe, Black Holes, Science