On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery roared into orbit, carrying with it the most famous observatory of all time: the Hubble Space Telescope. To commemorate this 19th anniversary, the Hubble folks have released this wonderful image of interacting galaxies called Arp 194.
Click to embiggen, or go here to hugely brobdingnangify. There's quite a bit going on here! First, take a look at the upper spiral galaxy, located 600 million light years from Earth. If you look at the top spiral arm, you'll see another galaxy nucleus lying along it; it's the bright orange patch above and to the right of the big spiral's center. It looks like that's the remains of a galaxy that is in the process of colliding with the big spiral (the other bright galaxy -- the compact spiral directly to the right of the big spiral's center -- appears to be a background ...
