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Hubble shows crashing galaxies
24/04/2008 20:06 - (SA)
Maggie Fox
Washington - 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."
Colour images online
The colour images, available online at
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 travelled for hundreds of
millions of years across space.
Because it orbits outside the Earth's atmosphere, Hubble's
cameras can take extremely sharp images.
Hubble won't be abandoned yet
Its future was controversial, as it required regular
servicing by space shuttle astronauts to stay in working
condition.
After the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster, a servicing
mission initially planned for 2004 was cancelled.
NASA at one point was planning to abandon the telescope,
hugely popular among astronomers. After an outcry, the US
space agency relented and a final Hubble servicing mission was
scheduled for August.
In 2013 the James Webb Space Telescope was scheduled to
replace Hubble.
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