Galaxies are cosmic neighbourhoods of stars, dust and gas held together by gravity - and there are billions of them in our universe! Sometimes these galaxies interact with each other and merge, attracted by their mutual gravity. In fact, our own Milky Way Galaxy will merge with the neighbouring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years.

While such interactions last for millions and millions of years, the Hubble Space Telescope is capturing snapshots of mergers in progress. In fact, starting with this new image of Arp 300, a series of new interacting galaxy images and information are coming your way by 2 February!

Arp 300 consists of two galaxies in gravitational interaction with each other. This leads to increased star formation, seen as bright blue regions in the spiral arms of these galaxies.
And just so you know, due to the extraordinarily large distances and timescales of these galaxy collisions, stars and planets almost never literally crash into each other in these interactions!

Image description:

Near the top centre of the image, a galaxy full of bright blue stars glows. To the lower left is a spiral galaxy, also filled with blue stars and dark brown dust. Other distant galaxies and stars fill the black background of space.