2018年05月23日:碰撞中的螺旋星系NGC 4038-（Spiral Galaxy NGC 4038 in Collision）--原图下载
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA;Processing & Copyright: Domingo Pestana
说明: 这个星系在过去的1千年之中，日子并不好过。事实上，在过去的1亿年中，它的日子一直过得不怎么样，而在接下来的10亿年之中，日子会更加动荡。影像右下角的NGC 4038，曾经是一个正常的螺旋星系，过着自己的小日子，直到位在它左上方的星系NGC 4039撞了过来，然后，就产生了上面主题影像中，这个目前仍在演化，名为触鬚星系的着名残骸。随着重力让个别星系的结构重整，成团的云气发生互撞，于是，泛蓝成团的明亮恒星形成，大质量恒星诞生和爆炸，把棕色的丝缕状尘埃喷得到处。最终，这二个星系将合併成一个较大的螺旋星系。这类的星系碰撞并不罕见，就连我们的银河系过去也经历数次碰撞，而在接下来的数十亿年内，预料将会和邻近的仙女座大星系撞成一团。组成这幅影像的照片，是由轨道上的哈伯太空望远镜所拍摄，而专业天文学家希望透过这种影像，能对星系碰撞有更完整的了解。这幅及其他许多的哈伯望远镜深空影像，都已公开发布，让有兴趣的业余人士下载，进一步处理成诸如上面这种具有视觉震撼性的组合影像。
原文：
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA;Processing & Copyright: Domingo Pestana
Explanation: This galaxy is having a bad millennium. In fact, the past 100 million years haven't been so good, and probably the next billion or so will be quite tumultuous. Visible toward the lower right, NGC 4038 used to be a normal spiral galaxy, minding its own business, until NGC 4039, to its upper left, crashed into it. The evolving wreckage, known famously as the Antennae, is featured here. As gravity restructures each galaxy, clouds of gas slam into each other, bright blue knots of stars form, massive stars form and explode, and brown filaments of dust are strewn about. Eventually the two galaxies will converge into one larger spiral galaxy.Such collisions are not unusual, and even our own Milky Way Galaxy has undergone several in the past and is predicted to collide with our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years.The frames that compose this image were taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope by professional astronomers to better understand galaxy collisions.These frames -- and many other deep space images from Hubble -- have since been made public, allowing interested amateurs to download and process them into, for example, this visually stunning composite.
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