Astronomers using the Hubble telescope took a picture of the object IC 2431, which is located at a distance of 681 million light years from Earth. According to astronomers, this object is the result of a merger of three galaxies..

The center of the image is obscured by a thick cloud of dust, however, light from the background galaxy can be seen penetrating its outer edges..

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It is noted that the object was discovered as part of the Galaxy Zoo civil project.. This project was the largest ever " Over 100,000 volunteers used data to classify 900,000 galaxies. In just 175 days, the project was able to do what would have taken professional astronomers years of work..

In the later stages of the Galaxy Zoo project, volunteers conducted the largest ever study of galaxy mergers and tidal dwarf galaxies, and discovered entirely new types of star-forming compact galaxies..

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The Hubble telescope was launched into orbit on April 24, 1990 by the crew of the Discovery space shuttle and has since transmitted millions of unique images to Earth, greatly expanding scientists' understanding of the structure and origin of the Universe.. For a quarter of a century, the device carried out 1.2 million targeted observations of 38 thousand space objects, on the basis of which about 13 thousand scientific papers were prepared. According to experts, "