Colliding Clusters of Galaxies

Colliding Clusters of Galaxies: Galaxy cluster 1E 0657-556, called the "Bullet Cluster," is actually two giant groups of galaxies that collided head-on. This composite picture was created from images taken by different space telescopes in X-ray and visible light. Astronomers think the collision made the dark matter around the galaxies visible, indicated by the blue regions, which bend the light from more distant galaxies in the background. The pink regions are hot gas stripped away in the collision. Dark matter is a still unidentified substance that makes up about 23 percent of the universe. It is thought to surround most galaxies, affecting their shapes by its gravity.

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Distant Galaxies

Distant Galaxies: In January 1996 astronomers were able to prove that there are five times more galaxies in the universe than previously thought. Helping them in this conclusion was the Deep Field image taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Although the image covers only a tiny speck of the sky, it is packed with galaxies.

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Hoag’s Object

Hoag’s Object: A ring of young, massive, blue stars surrounds a nucleus of older, yellow stars in the galaxy known as Hoag’s Object. Astronomers speculate that this unusual separation is the result of a collision with another galaxy. Hoag’s Object lies 600 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens.

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Milky Way

Milky Way : Spiral galaxies, such as our own Milky Way, have a relatively flat disk shape with spiral arms. This false-color image looks toward the center of the Milky Way, located 30,000 light-years away.

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The Andromeda Galaxy

The Andromeda Galaxy, a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way Galaxy, is the farthest object from Earth visible to the naked eye. Its whirlpool of stars can be seen from the Northern Hemisphere in the constellation Andromeda. The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are part of a group of galaxies called the Local Group, which in turn is part of larger group called the Virgo Cluster.

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The spiral galaxy M100

The spiral galaxy M100: is located between 35 million and 80 million light-years from earth. The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the core of M100 after repairs were made to the telescope in December 1993.

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Colliding Galaxies

Colliding Galaxies: a collision between two spiral galaxies that began millions of years ago created the so-called Antennae galaxies, named for the antenna-like arms thrown out by the encounter. The two galaxies are merging together, causing billions of new stars to form.

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The elliptical galaxies

The elliptical galaxies M86 and M84: are members of the Virgo cluster of galaxies, located about 50 million light-years away from our smaller cluster, the Local Group. Elliptical galaxies are populated by older stars and contain little interstellar matter. They are usually the brightest galaxies.

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Hickson Compact Group (HCG) 87

Hickson Compact Group (HCG) 87: is about 400 million light-years from Earth. The galaxies are interacting gravitationally, influencing one another’s structure and evolution. The image was taken by the Gemini South telescope at Cerro Pachón, Chile.

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