Do you need some hi-res Hubble love right now? How about a half dozen *spectacular* images of galaxies colliding?

The answer is yes. Yes, you do. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/hubbles-half-dozen-cosmic-train-wrecks

2/ Galaxies are in a weird spot in the scale of the Universe. They're actually fairly big compared to the distance between them. For example, stars are a million km wide but trillions of km apart: a scale of a million to one. Stars are small compared to the distance between them.

3/ But galaxies are 100,000s of light years wide and frequently less than a million light years apart. So they're *big* compared to the distance between them. They also move around and have a lot of gravity, so, sometimes, they collide. A cosmic train wrek, writ very, very large.

4/ Hubble sees this is in greta detail when they happen to be relatively nearby. These six are amazing examples. I mean look at this.

LOOK AT IT

5/ That's NGC 6052, a pair of sprial galaxies colliding at near perpendicular angles. Like someone threw a circular saw blade and hit another circular saw blade already in the air. Incredible.

And this pic is small. Here's the hi-res one:
https://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/images/large/potw1909a.jpg

Oof.

6/ When galaxies like this collide, giant gas clouds from the two slam into each other (gas clouds are very large compared to the distances between them). They collapse and form stars. These images were taken to investigate clusters of stars formed in the collision aftermath.

7/ Here's the Medusa merger, tho I think it looks more like a Portugese Man-of-War. The "tentacles" are streams of stars and nebulae flung out as the gravity of one galaxy pulls on the other. These are called "tidal tails", one of my favorite features of collisions.

8/8 I have another collison pic on the blog, links to even more from Hubble, and of course plenty o' science. Check 'em out. It's hard to imagine such havoc on cosmic scales... but it sure is pretty to look at.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/hubbles-half-dozen-cosmic-train-wrecks

/fin