---
title: "Colliding Galaxies Look Like the Glowing Eyes of a Ghostly Face"
description: "NASA has released an image for Halloween that looks like a ghostly face but is actually two galaxies colliding some 704 million light-years away."
date: "2019-10-30"
modified: "2019-10-30"
authors:
  - name: "Kristin Houser"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/kristin"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-halloween-colliding-galaxies-ghostly-face"
categories:
  - "Science & Energy"
tags:
  - "halloween"
  - "hubble space telescope"
  - "NASA"
  - "the digest"
---

# Colliding Galaxies Look Like the Glowing Eyes of a Ghostly Face

![NASA has released an image for Halloween that looks like a ghostly face but is actually two galaxies colliding some 704 million light-years away.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/nasa-halloween-colliding-galaxies-ghostly-face.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: NASA/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Ghostly Face

Even NASA is getting into the Halloween spirit.

On Tuesday, the agency [released an image](<https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2019/news-2019-51>) captured by the Hubble Space Telescope — and it depicts what looks like a ghostly face with glowing spiral eyes.

## Galactic Horror

Obviously, there isn't really a [giant face](<https://media.giphy.com/media/26DOs997h6fgsCthu/giphy.gif>) staring us down from 704 million light-years away. But what we're actually seeing in the new Hubble image is just about as wild: a collision between two galaxies.

"Each 'eye' is the bright core of a galaxy, the result of one galaxy slamming into another," NASA wrote in a [news release.](<https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2019/news-2019-51>) "The outline of the face is a ring of young blue stars. Other clumps of new stars form a nose and mouth."

![nasa-halloween-colliding-galaxies-ghostly-face](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/NASA-Ghostly-Face.jpg>)
*Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and M. Durbin (University of Washington)*

## NASA Halloween

This isn't the first time NASA has bridged the gap between the scientific and the spooky.

For Halloween 2018, the agency released Hubble images of a glowing [ghost nebula](<https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2018/hubble-captures-the-ghost-of-cassiopeia>) and a "[bat shadow](<https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2018/hubble-reveals-a-giant-cosmic-bat-shadow>)" formed by a young star. Four years prior to that, it shared an image of the Sun that looked remarkably like a [flaming jack-o'-lantern](<https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11711>).

**READ MORE:** [Hubble Captures Galaxies' Ghostly Gaze](<https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2019/news-2019-51>) \[NASA\]

**More on Halloween:** *[AI Dreamed up These Nightmare Fuel Halloween Masks](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/nightmare-fuel-ai-halloween-masks>)*

### Author social links  
[LinkedIn](<https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinjhouser>)