This picture was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and published by NASA on Friday. It shows the jellyfish galaxy JO206 as it travels through the cosmos around 700 million light-years distant from Earth in the constellation Aquarius.

The colorful star-forming disk of the jellyfish galaxy can be seen prominently in the photograph, and it is ringed by brilliant clouds of dust. In contrast to the pitch-black background of space, the remainder of the picture is relatively devoid of detail, with the exception of a few brilliant stars in the foreground, which are highlighted by diffraction spikes that are crisscrossed.

The picture clearly demonstrates that Jellyfish Galaxies have a striking resemblance to their aquatic namesakes. You can observe lengthy “tentacles” of brilliant star formation that are trailing the main disc of the galaxy, exactly like the tentacles of a jellyfish would follow the main disc. This can be seen in the bottom right corner.

NASA captured a “jellyfish galaxy” travelling through a galactic cluster as the intra-cluster medium removed its gas

Galaxy clusters are filled with a substance referred to as “intra-cluster medium,” which is a very weak superheated plasma. This medium fills the space in between the galaxies that make up the cluster.

When galaxies travel through galaxy clusters, they are compelled to travel across this medium. The intracluster medium proceeds to drain the galaxies of their gas, which is what ultimately results in the formation of the lengthy tendrils or tentacles.

It is vital for astronomers to study star formation under extreme settings because the tendrils of the jellyfish allow them to do so. These conditions are far removed from the impact of the galaxy’s main disk. The image of JW39, a different jellyfish galaxy that was photographed by Hubble, was published by the space agency in the previous month.