Arp 188 — better known as the Tadpole Galaxy or UGC 10214 — occupies the upper-right of this Hubble view, its bright, creamy centre trailing an extraordinary streamer of stars towards the lower-left. Around it, darkness is crowded with points, smudges and slender streaks of light: a background population of about 3,000 faint galaxies, each distinct enough to give the field a remarkable sense of depth.

The Tadpole lies in the constellation Draco, some 400 million light-years from Earth. Its unusual form is the aftermath of a gravitational encounter with a smaller, compact blue galaxy, visible through the larger galaxy’s disc. Powerful tidal forces drew out the narrow tail of stars and gas, which extends for more than 280,000 light-years. What appears at first to be a delicate filament is therefore a structure of almost inconceivable scale.

Young blue stars and star clusters populate both the spiral arms and the tidal tail. According to the release, each cluster represents the formation of as many as a million stars; their blue colour comes from exceptionally massive, hot and luminous members. The interaction has not merely distorted the galaxy’s shape. It has also generated a torrent of new star formation along the disturbance.

A closer look

The galaxy’s inner region is compact and intensely luminous, surrounded by textured arms that seem to loosen as they pass into the tail. Cool turquoise and blue structures gather around warmer white and orange highlights, while fine dark lanes and irregular folds interrupt the glow. At the outer fringes, the material becomes more diffuse, giving the Tadpole a striking transition from dense, turbulent centre to attenuated stellar stream.

Along that stream, small blue knots punctuate the fainter material. Two particularly prominent clumps are separated by a gap; astronomers consider them likely to develop into dwarf galaxies orbiting within the Tadpole’s halo. Elsewhere, newly formed clusters lie along the spiral arms, their concentrated light tracing the regions most affected by the encounter. The compact intruder itself can be found at the upper-left edge of the larger galaxy, seen against or through its disc as it apparently leaves the interaction behind.

The wider field changes the character of the composition. Hundreds of tiny forms are immediately apparent, and still more emerge on close examination: reddish flecks, pale ovals, sharp points and elongated galaxies dispersed across the dark blue ground. The official account places their total at about 3,000 — twice the number seen in the 1995 Hubble Deep Field. Their varied shapes form a deep visual backdrop to the Tadpole’s much nearer gravitational upheaval.

How this image was made

Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys recorded the field on 1 and 9 April 2002, shortly after the instrument was installed aboard the telescope during Servicing Mission 3B. The camera combined a broad field of view with the sharpness required to distinguish the many faint and compact galaxies behind Arp 188.

The finished colour image was constructed from three separate observations made through blue, orange and near-infrared filters. It is therefore a composite rather than a single exposure. The different filtered views preserve distinctions among the Tadpole’s bright young clusters, its warmer central regions and the varied galaxy population spread across the background. The ACS obtained this field in one-twelfth of the observing time used for the Hubble Deep Field, while detecting even fainter objects in blue light.

Image details and provenance

• Subject: Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy, UGC 10214
• Object type: Spiral and barred galaxy
• Constellation: Draco
• Distance from Earth: 400 million light-years
• Physical scale: The tidal tail extends for more than 280,000 light-years
• Telescope: Hubble Space Telescope
• Instrument: Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS)
• Observation dates: 1 and 9 April 2002
• Wavelengths and filters: Near-infrared, orange and blue filters
• Image construction: Colour composite constructed from three separate filtered images
• Original release date: 30 April 2002, 15:00
• Image credit: NASA , Holland Ford (JHU), the ACS Science Team and ESA

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