Galaxies gone wild!

[Johnny Rico]

New images from Hubble show a lot of galaxies doin some wierd things. Here's a large collage picture of the images:

Galaxies Galore

Oh while I at it, here's the article to go alone with it.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Great picture. Thanks for posting it.

I just caught an episode of The Universe on History that was talking about this very phenomenon.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Very cool. The photos on the NASA site are probably my favorite feature

 

[MetroKid]

on a scale of 1 to awesome that ranks as super great!

 

[All Seeing Eye]

wow, that picture of galaxies makes me super depressed.
Everytime I see those galaxies it makes me realise i'll never be able to visit them, i'll never even make it off this rock, i'll be dead long before any colony is set up on Mars, my dream of visiting the stars and searching out new life and new civilisations is just that, a dream. The universe has billions of galaxies and each galaxy has billions of stars and i'll visit none of them.
How depressing.

 

[TheMasterOfOrion]

and the irony is despite these amazing ground breaking images, the Hubble has been dying slowly

In late 2008 NASA will hopefully launch STS-125 to repair the telescope and attach a new UV cam on it

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Hubble's mission will then end in 2013, and at some point after that it will be splashed.

Which is stupid.

Even though the shuttle fleet will have been grounded by then, I'd like to think that enough pieces could be cobbled together for a rescue mission, to bring Hubble back to Earth to show off to future generations what Hubble was.

Splashing Hubble is a waste. We're not thinking.

Oh, and as for the galaxies.

We won't be alive to see it, and humanity probably won't be alive to see it, but the view when Andromeda collides with the Milky Way in three billion years should be fantastic.

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

The universe has billions of galaxies and each galaxy has billions of stars and i'll visit none of them.
How depressing.

Pfft, try the reverse.

Go out to the back yard one clear dark night, look up at the stars above you and marvel at how unbe-fucking-lievably big the universe is and put your own problems in perspective.

We won't be alive to see it, and humanity probably won't be alive to see it, but the view when Andromeda collides with the Milky Way in three billion years should be fantastic.

Makes me think of that scene in Austin Powers. Instead of the security guard and the road roller, you've got astronomers on Earth yelling "stooooooooop!" and aliens on Andromeda waving at us to get out of the way

 

[Brent]

Great pics, thanks for the link

 

[anais]

Even though the shuttle fleet will have been grounded by then, I'd like to think that enough pieces could be cobbled together for a rescue mission, to bring Hubble back to Earth to show off to future generations what Hubble was.

But can the shuttle even re-enter the atmosphere and glide to the ground safely with that kind of cargo? It's designed to bring stuff up, not down.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

But can the shuttle even re-enter the atmosphere and glide to the ground safely with that kind of cargo? It's designed to bring stuff up, not down.

Hubble fit in the shuttle cargo bay going up.

Putting Hubble back in may be the tricky part.

Having something Hubble-sized in the cargo bay wouldn't be an issue on reentry, as it wouldn't be any different than having an ESA SpaceLab module inside. And there have been several missions like that.

There has been at least one shuttle mission where they snagged a satellite and brought it back.

In short, it's doable.

 

[M'Sharak]

Even though the shuttle fleet will have been grounded by then, I'd like to think that enough pieces could be cobbled together for a rescue mission, to bring Hubble back to Earth to show off to future generations what Hubble was.

But can the shuttle even re-enter the atmosphere and glide to the ground safely with that kind of cargo? It's designed to bring stuff up, not down.

It was designed to do both, and has done more than one "retrieve and return" mission.