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Plethora of interacting galaxies on Hubble's birthday SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE NEWS RELEASE Posted: April 24, 2008 Astronomy textbooks typically present galaxies as staid, solitary, and majestic island worlds of glittering stars. But galaxies have a wild side. They have flirtatious close encounters that sometimes end in grand mergers and overflowing "maternity wards" of new star birth as the colliding galaxies morph into wondrous new shapes. Today, in celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope's 18th launch anniversary, 59 views of colliding galaxies constitute the largest collection of Hubble images ever released to the public. This new Hubble atlas dramatically illustrates how galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures in never-before-seen detail.
For all their violence, galactic smash-ups take place at a glacial rate by human standards - timescales on the order of several hundred million years. The images in the Hubble atlas capture snapshots of the various merging galaxies at various stages in their collision. Most of the 59 new Hubble images are part of a large investigation of luminous and ultra-luminous infrared galaxies called the GOALS project (Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey). This survey combines observations from Hubble, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, and NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The majority of the Hubble observations are led by Aaron S. Evans of University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University. The images are available here. |
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Apollo Collage This beautiful one piece set features the Apollo program emblem surrounded by the individual mission logos.STS-127 Patch The official embroidered patch for shuttle Endeavour's flight to finish building Japanese section of the space station.![]() Hubble Patch The official embroidered patch for mission STS-125, the space shuttle's last planned service call to the Hubble Space Telescope, is available for purchase.Project Orion The Orion crew exploration vehicle is NASA's first new human spacecraft developed since the space shuttle a quarter-century earlier. The capsule is one of the key elements of returning astronauts to the Moon.Fallen Heroes Patch Collection The official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store. |
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