Spectacular View of Two Seemingly Colliding Galaxies Captured By Hubble

[JMH]

Hubble has captured this beautiful new view of NGC 3314, two spiral galaxies located in the constellation Hydra, between 117 and 140 million light-years away from Earth. But they are not really colliding. If they were, they would look like this.

It's an optical effect: NGC 3314A (on the foreground) and NGC 3314B (on the background) are just overlapping, separated "ten times the distance between our Milky Way and neighboring Andromeda galaxy."

I just like to think they are in love and smooching. [NASA]

http://gizmodo.com/5918696/hubble-captures-spectacular-view-of-two-seemingly-colliding-galaxies

 

[zigzag3143]

Not bad for a 15+ year old system. Though newer satellites have better resolution, hubbles pictures have come to define our understanding of the universe.