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Hubble telescope captures crashing galaxies

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Images of colliding galaxies show them spinning, sliding and slipping into one another, wreaking stellar destruction that will give birth to new and larger galaxies.

The Maryland-based Space Telescope Science Institute released 59 new images from the Hubble Space Telescope on Thursday to celebrate the 18th anniversary of its launch.

"This new Hubble atlas dramatically illustrates how galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures in never-before-seen detail," the Institute said in a statement.

"Astronomers observe only one out of a million galaxies in the nearby universe in the act of colliding. However, galaxy mergers were much more common long ago when they were closer together, because the expanding universe was smaller."

The color images, available online here http://hubblesite.org/news/2008/16 , are a look back in time. It takes hundreds of millions of years for galaxies to merge and the light from their stars has traveled for hundreds of millions of years across space.

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Vierotchka

23 responses // Hubble telescope captures crashing galaxies

  • What u cant see why one step closer to figuring something out
    CodyWody
  • watch this comment being used here and here
    this is absolutely breath taking! i can only hope we someday create technology advanced enough to explore such depths of the universe!
    abreecdefg
  • Absolutely breathtaking.
    seeker561
  • Now this needs to be a movie. One day you're just living on your alien farm when all of a sudden you start to feel the gravitational pull of another solar system that is on a collison course with your own. I can only hope I live to see the day this happens to Earth
    StuntBunny
  • Yes it would be a good movie, to show what it would look like from a planet, from the center of each of the galaxies and from outside both galaxies to get all the perspectives together.
    Argon18
  • the black holes in the center of those galaxies must be having the time of their lives with all that matter to feed on. i wonder if it'll give us the opportunity to study what happens as two black holes possibly merge.

    and just so you all know, the milky way is on a collision course as well, it just won't happen for a few billion years still
    diode
  • NASA and their all exclusive club. I am a tax payer, 59 new images?, when they have thousands?
    hyperbrand
  • http://hubblesite.org/gallery/
    59 new color images that are corrected for viewing. A lot of the others are more for spectroscopic, infrared and ultraviolet analysis that aren't as pretty as those.

    As for being taxpayers, they are all royalty free and public domain so you can use them for other purposes. I have a couple hundred that I've used for graphic designs and animations that I've gotten from the Hubble web site.
    Argon18
  • I worked for Jpl and they never showed us this. ;)
    oly90808
  • this gives me such a strong feeling of cosmicism that I can't stand it. the concept that these things are happening all the time is astounding.
    wtenny
  • makes you feel sooo small :)
    yonie
  • I really wish I could go in to space. Just half a day up there with a camera and a couple of friends. That's all I'm asking for.
    richjm
  • These images really get people engaged with science.
    hereandnow
  • "When worlds collide" was too small a concept. And stellar is right. Thank god we actually look outward instead of just at our own planetary navel. And we don't even look at our own navel well enough! (cuz like we can't figure out we're destroying our world, duh). We need to continue all the observation we can stand...
    24French
  • muthafuckin crashing galaxies!?! damn!!
    Jouvon_Kingsby
  • Wow! How cool is that? It makes my day. A good story. No this is real hope!!
    Wreyeter
  • quite incredible really. makes you wonder just how little we really know about the universe we live in.
    alman365
  • Beautiful stuff!
    Nothing like visiting the Hubble galleries to make you feel like the tiniest bit of space dust clinging to the back of God's boot.
    Humdrum
  • See God, Kai.
    notsure
  • Fascinating! The universe really is stranger than we can imagine.
    phoenix_fire999
  • thats cool as hell, i hope speilberg gets inspired
    B3rt
  • this is truly awesome!
    quacksalot
  • Oooooh, preeetyyyy!
    Neghie

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