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Hubble’s Interacting Galaxies

Galaxies reshaped by cosmic collisions and interactions, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows ESO 185-IG013, a luminous blue compact galaxy (BCG). BCGs are nearby galaxies...
A bright, purplish galaxy glows at the image’s center, with blue stars interspersed and a blue-white haze extending outward, all against black space dotted with stars and distant galaxies.
UGC 3912 is classified as a spiral galaxy … but you wouldn’t know it from this detailed Hubble Space Telescope...
A scattered grouping of blue and violet stars shines near the lower half of the image. Distant galaxies fill the black background of space, and bright stars with diffraction spikes are visible throughout.
The galaxy NGC 5427 shines in this new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. It’s part of the galaxy pair Arp...
A massive spiral galaxy fills the lower left of the image. Spiral arms full of dark brown dust and bright blue stars extend out from the yellow galactic core, all against black space dotted with more distant galaxies and stars.
Looking like a baseball lobbed into the depths of the universe, ESO 420-G013 is a face-on spiral galaxy and a...
A glowing, white galaxy shines at the center of the image, interlaced with dark brown dust. More distant galaxies and stars fill the black background of space.
A pair of small, interacting galaxies shine in this new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. The larger of the two...
The lower half of the image is filled with a large spiral galaxy that has a bright white bar of stars at its center. To its upper left, a smaller galaxy shines with bright blue stars. It has an irregular shape, appearing almost like a vertical bar of stars. The rest of the image shows black space interspersed with more distant galaxies and stars.
One of the galaxies from a galactic group known as Arp 295 is visible in this new NASA Hubble Space...
A galaxy laced through with dark brown dust is viewed edge-on, shining against black space dotted with more distant galaxies. The central galaxy has a hazy bridge of faint stars extending down through the bottom of the image.
A barred spiral galaxy and a lenticular galaxy come together to create this interacting pair known as Arp 140. The...
Two side-by-side galaxies fill the image. The leftmost galaxy is a bright spiral galaxy bursting with blue stars. The rightmost is a lenticular galaxy, emitting a hazy glow. Distant stars and galaxies dot the background.
This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a group of interacting galaxies known as LEDA 60847. LEDA 60847 is...
A glowing pink point of light with diffraction spikes is surrounded by dark dust and faint stars. Two yellowish points of light are visible above and below it, all against black space dotted with intermittent distant galaxies.
Arp 300 consists of two interacting galaxies, UGC 05028 (the smaller face-on spiral galaxy) and UGC 05029 (the larger face-on...
Near the top center of the image, a galaxy full of bright blue stars shines. To its lower left is a spiral galaxy, also full of blue stars and dark brown dust. Other distant galaxies and stars fill the black background of space.
This striking image captures the interacting galaxy pair known as Arp-Madore 2339-661. The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of peculiar...
Two spiral galaxies. Each glows brightly in the center, where a bar stretches from side to side. The upper one is rounder, and its arms form two thin rings. The lower galaxy is flatter and its arms make one outer ring; a dusty knot atop its upper arm marks out a third object. Gravity is pulling gas and dust together where the galaxies come close. A number of small galaxies surround them on a black background.
This image taken using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) shows Arp 107, a celestial object...
A pair of merging galaxies. The galaxy on the left has a large, single spiral arm curving out from the core and around to below it, with very visible glowing dust and gas. The right galaxy has a bright core but only a bit of very faint material. A broad curtain of gas connects the two galaxies’ cores and hangs beneath them. A few small stars and galaxies are scattered around the black background.
A spectacular trio of merging galaxies in the constellation Boötes takes center stage in this image from the Hubble Space...
Three galaxies stand together just right of centre. They are close enough that they appear to be merging into one. Their shapes are distorted, with strands of gas and dust running between them. Each is emitting a lot of light. Further to the left is an unconnected, dimmer spiral galaxy. The background is dark, with a few smaller, dim and faint galaxies and a couple of stars.
This Hubble Space Telescope image captures an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called the Hickson Compact Group 40. This...
Five galaxies, two toward the upper right and top center, three clustered together in the lower right.
The magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 2276 looks a bit lopsided in this Hubble Space Telescope snapshot. A bright hub of...
On a black, starry background is a large spiral galaxy filled with streaks of blue and pink. Its right-side arm appears to be breaking away from the rest of the galaxy.
A head-on collision between two galaxies fueled the unusual triangular-shaped star-birthing frenzy, as captured this Hubble Space Telescope image. The...
Two galaxies one right one on the left. right galaxy has a blue-white triangular star forming region surrounding it.
This is a Hubble Space Telescope snapshot of the early stages of a collision between two galaxies that resembles a...
Two galaxies with bright white centers and white glows around them look like eyes surrounded by a reddish haze of gas and dust, with a brownish glow of the same forming an arc around them, thicker on the bottom.
It is now widely accepted among astronomers that an important aspect of how galaxies evolve is the way they interact...
Galaxy pair interacting. a nearly edge-on spiral galaxy from left-center to right side of the image. another galaxy perpendicular and above it. dust and gas stream between them.
The peculiar spiral galaxy ESO 415-19, which lies around 450 million light-years away, stretches lazily across this NASA/ESA Hubble Space...
A spiral galaxy. It has a bright core with patches of dark dust, and fuzzier, dimmer spiral arms in cooler colors, with spots of bright blue. Long, faint tidal streams stretch from the galaxy’s arms: one up to the top of the frame, one curving down to the bottom-left corner. In the top-right there is a smaller, orange elliptical galaxy. The background is studded with many tiny stars and galaxies.
The galaxy merger Arp-Madore 417-391 steals the spotlight in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The Arp-Madore catalogue is...
Two galaxies right of center form a ring shape. The ring is narrow and blue, and the cores of the two galaxies form a bulge on the ring’s side. A bright, orange star lies above the ring. Two smaller spiral galaxies appear left of center, as well as a few stars. The background is black and speckled with very small stars and galaxies.
This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows two of the galaxies in the galactic triplet Arp 248 — also...
Two face-on spiral galaxies at upper-left and lower-right corners. a long, faint, pale-blue streak joins them, crossing the field diagonally. a small, orange, edge-on spiral galaxy at left of the lower galaxy.
The two interacting galaxies making up the pair known as Arp-Madore 608-333 seem to float side by side in this...
Two spiral galaxies, one at upper-left the other at lower-right, both are nearly face-on providing views of their spiral arms, background stars and galaxies.
This striking image from the Hubble Space Telescope showcases Arp 298, a stunning pair of interacting galaxies. Arp 298 —...
Large face-on spiral galaxy on the lower-left half of the image with a smaller galaxy in the upper left. Several smaller galaxies are seen in the background.
These three galaxies, collectively known as NGC 7764A, were imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The two galaxies in the...
Three galaxies, the center one holds two extended arms, one of which appears to connect to a galaxy at upper right.
This observation from the Hubble Space Telescope showcases Arp 86, a peculiar pair of interacting galaxies which lies roughly 220...
Two spiral galaxies, one at upper-left the other at lower-right, both are nearly face-on, providing views of stars, gas, and dust. Background stars and galaxies.
This Hubble Space Telescope captures a three-way gravitational tug-of-war between interacting galaxies. This system —known as Arp 195— is featured...
Three galaxies, the center one is barely visible and bleeds into the others on the right and left. The one on the right has a long trail of stars stretching toward the bottom. The left one still appears as an intact spiral.. A bright diffracted foreground star at far-left.
Appearing within the boundless darkness of space, the Hubble Space Telescope’s snapshot of NGC 34 looks more like an otherworldly,...
Galaxy just above center of the image with a bright white center, surrounded by pinkish-white groups of stars and brownish wisps of gas and dust, with trails of white stars off to the left. Many more galaxies in the background.
In this Hubble Space Telescope image, the galaxy NGC 2799 (on the left) is seemingly being pulled into the center...
An interacting pair of galaxies. The one at the left of the image likes like a blue-white streak. The one at center-right is whitish with brown streaks. The blue one appears warped, and seems to be getting ripped apart. Rain comes to mind when looking at this, like the stars and gas of the blue galaxy are mere particles condensing and falling into the white galaxy like rain.
Some galaxies are closer friends than others. While many live their own separate, solitary lives, others stray a little too...
Two galaxies. The one at the right of the image is seen edge-on and vertical, glowing yellow-orange. The one at the left is a tilted disk, white and yellow near the center and reddish and white at the outsides.
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope snapshot reveals what looks like an uncanny pair of glowing eyes staring in our direction....
Two galaxies, each has a bright-white core. Their cores are very close together. They are surrounded by light blue gas, dust, and stars that form a ring around the cores.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the interacting galaxy pair Arp 273, popularly called the “Rose.” The larger...
Spiral galaxy at the top of the image with a smaller galaxy being pulled in from the bottom.
The Antennae galaxies, a merging pair of galaxies located about 62 million light-years from Earth, are shown in this image...
Comma shaped curved cloud of gases in bright white edged with bright-pink star forming regions, and threaded with rusty-brown tendrils of dust at center and throughout the comma shaped merger. All set against the black of deep space.
Two galaxies in this Hubble Space Telescope image, each containing a vast number of stars, are swinging past each other...
A pair of merging galaxies. The galaxy on the right has a large, single spiral arm curving out from the core and around to above it, with very visible glowing dust and gas. The left galaxy is shaped like a long bar., surrounded by swirls of blue-white stars. A thin stream of whitish gas connects the two galaxies' cores. A few small stars and galaxies are scattered around the black background.
NGC 7714 is a spiral galaxy 100 million light-years from Earth — a relatively close neighbor in cosmic terms. The...
A swirled galaxy with a bright center and a swooping tail of stars pulled out into a glowing golden loop that eventually trails off to the right of the galaxy. A bright foreground star and more-distant galaxies are visible in the image.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows three galaxies playing a game of gravitational tug-of-war. The galaxy interaction may ultimately lead...
Two glowing white spheres, one on the left above center and one just lower-right of center. Above the right galaxy is a smear of white stars with a streak of brown gas in it.
This interacting galaxy duo, resembling a celestial hummingbird with an egg, is collectively called Arp 142. The pair contains the...
Three galaxies in a vertical image. Top one is small, blue, and vertical. The middle galaxy is half-curved around the lower galaxy and by far the largest. The lowest galaxy is a bright white orb.
Bright, pink nebulas almost completely encircle a distorted spiral galaxy in this Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 922. The...
White galaxy center with a haze of blue-white stars mostly below it; area above the center is thinner. Many thick streaks of reddish-pink nebulae, including forming an outer ring around the galaxy.
These four dwarf galaxies waited billions of years to come together, setting off a fireworks show as thousands of new...
The stars, gas, and dust seem to form a blue, white, and purple knot-shaped bow on the left, with a small red-orange spiral in the background in the upper left. A bright white foreground star just lower-left of center. Another smaller, purple-white spiral in the bottom-right.
This Hubble Space Telescope portrait of Stephan's Quintet, also known as Hickson Compact Group 92, seems to show a group...
A Hubble image of 5 galaxies, three spirals in a triangle near the top (two red-orange, one blue-white), the last two (a red-orange sphere and a small distant spiral) near the bottom.
The Hubble Space Telescope photographed this peculiar system of galaxies known as Arp 194. This interacting group contains several galaxies,...
Large galaxy at the top of the image, spiraling in, at the bottom a smaller galaxy is there, the two galaxies are almost linked by a bright blue line of stars and gas.
These two gravitationally interacting galaxies are oriented so that they appear to mark the number 10 in this Hubble Space...
Left: a disk galaxy that appears nearly edge-on to our line of sight with its long axis vertical and just left of image center. It has a bright core with a smooth ring of starlight surrounding it. Right: a ring galaxy. Its pancake-shaped disk of material appears is a clumpy blue ring of intense star formation. A dusty reddish blob at the bottom of the blue ring may be the galaxy’s original nucleus.