Hubble Space Telescope Spots a Rare View of 3 Galaxies About to Collide

The Hubble Space Telescope has detected three galaxies in the constellation Boötes that are heading for a collision. Three galaxies that can be seen in the image will eventually merge into a single huge bright galaxy.

This colliding trio, collectively known to astronomers as SDSSCGB 10189, is a relatively rare combination of three large star-forming galaxies only 50,000 light-years apart. According to scientists, this is an extremely small distance on a cosmic scale. For example, the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest large galaxy to our Milky Way, is more than 2.5 million light-years from Earth.

Galactic collisions are quite common, but this particular one is rare as all three galaxies are now in the process of birthing new stars. During their collision, the spiral structure of the three galaxies will be destroyed by gravitational interactions between the trio.