Cosmic Collisions
Friday, April 25th, 2008Yesterday 59 new images of colliding galaxies taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have been published to mark the 18th anniversary of the telescope’s launch. They have also published a special site with the pictures and other information.
“This is the largest collection of Hubble images ever released to the public simultaneously” it says on the European homepage of the Hubble Information Centre.
“Interacting galaxies are found throughout the Universe, sometimes as dramatic collisions that trigger bursts of star formation, on other occasions as stealthy mergers that result in new galaxies…. Our own Milky Way contains the debris of the many smaller galaxies it has encountered and devoured in the past, and it is currently absorbing the Sagittarius dwarf elliptical galaxy.”
You can download the images of the cosmic collisions, and also see them in a beautiful video.
So the next time you are flying through the galaxies, pay attention not to get involved in a galaxy crash!
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (Click on picture to enlarge)