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Josh, Seattle — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:51:34 GMT

And this is why we need to keep the Hubble in working order!

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Alex, Rockville, MD — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:55:59 GMT

This is pretty amazing, but I have a question. The photo shows millions, if not billions, of entities, whether they be stars, planets, asteroids, or whatever. How does a satellite that is traveling thousands of miles an hour dodge all these things that are out there? I realize these things are very far apart, but satellites travel in a straight line...they don't dodge things. How in the world can they make it millions of miles through space without hitting something?

[ALAN ADDS: I forgot to mention that most of the bright spots you see are stars belonging to the galaxy NGC 253, which is out of view to the right (so says the news release). NGC 253, sometimes known as the Silver Dollar Galaxy, is 8 million light-years from Earth, so as far as we know no satellite has been anywhere near there. Here's yet another picture of NGC 253:]

http://www.galex.caltech.edu/media/glx2006-03r_img02.html

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Stephen in L.A. — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:59:14 GMT

All I can say is that Hubble continues to astound. Wow.

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Cecil Wingfield, San Antonio, TX — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:02:49 GMT

Yes indeed, let's repair and upgrade the Hubble. The unanswered question in Alan Boyle's article is this: Based on what we know about any two galaxies colliding, what exactly will be the fate of the smaller galaxy in this photo? Will it be torn apart and eventually reabsorbed into the larger galaxy? Will it be sucked into a black hole in the larger galaxy's center, never to be seen again? Or do we simply not know?

[ALAN ADDS: Although the researchers haven't yet figured out exactly how far away one galaxy is from the other, they are pretty sure the smaller one is not being drawn into the larger one. They think the two are so far away that there's no interaction between them, and it's just pure luck that one was directly in front of the other. The reason they think that is because the background galaxy is "plain vanilla," with no disruption in the spiral ... as you would expect if the two galaxies were interacting gravitationally.]

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Fruber Malcome, Seattle, Wash — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:10:27 GMT

To answer Alex with an analogy; what you are saying is: If you put a single house in every country (that's it, just a single house) and then you start from some random point on earth and run in a straight line. What are the odds of you hitting a house as you traveled across the earth hundreds/thousands of times (starting from a new point each rotation).
Eventually you would/could hit something, but those odds are fairly remote.

The only thing that makes it more likely that you'd hit something would be the gravitational pull that each of the objects have on the satellite. So in this case, you'd take a few steps towards a house as you saw one.

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J Quinlan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:14:20 GMT

With continuous photographs such as these, how could NASA ever consider NOT keeping HUBBLE running? It is as much a jewel as any, in the sky!

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Dolli, Nevada — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:32:45 GMT

I am very amazed at what has happened there. Though I
wonder how the Hubble gets the photos from so far?

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Tim Rommes, Washington, UT — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:37:52 GMT

How much of that dust is closer in between systems? There it would just be part of the blurry background glow on visual examination. It seems like half a galaxy's mass could be between systems, accounting for a great deal of "dark" matter. You'd have all the galaxial dust that wasn't pulled into a star system plus all the solar winds. All we look at is brightness, attach it to a stellar mass and go with that as a mass index. "Near" stars this would act as a reflector, increasing brightness, far away it would obscure what brightness is there. I think interstellar dust, or this, the same stuff farther out where it didn't have the pull to form systems, is a wildcard for galactic mass.

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Steve — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:54:06 GMT

Alan, you stated in your response to Alex that NGC 253 was 8 billion light years from earth and yet the NGC 253 link you provided indicates that this galaxy is only 10 million light years from Earth.

Alone from that this is an amazing photograph and only points to the fact that this next shuttle mission to repair Hubble will be worth every cent we taxpayers are spending. I have added this photo to my background; I love staring at it while wasting time here at work.

Alan, please keep the science articles coming, they have been very informative and well written.

[ALAN ADDS: Ugh, I made a mistake with that billion-light-year reference, that wouldn't be "nearby" at all. Thanks for catching that, I've corrected the reference in the comments. Sorry about that!]

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James Mendelson, New York, NY — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:01:39 GMT

satellites do hit tiny dust particles and space debris everyday. Occassionally some satellites are rendered unworkable. However, the distance to major objects like stars, galaxies and other planets is so vast that there is no danger of collision. It would be like an ant on the ground in danger of striking the sun; only in some cases, trillion of times further in the case of distant interstellar space objects.

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David, Elkridge, MD — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:59:44 GMT

Alex...

"Space," (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."
- from (the eponymous) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

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Amazed, Arkansas — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:13:07 GMT

With ALL of those stars in that SMALL section of space.. it's hard to fathom that we're the ONLY intelligent life form in the Universe.

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Ben, Los Angeles, CA — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:13:44 GMT

This is why we need a new and better version of Hubble up there, so we could get much bter images.

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Noelle Dalton Worcester Ma — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:21:46 GMT

I LOVE Hubble the best money the US ever spent

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Edvar Mexico — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:50:43 GMT

A satellite hitting something? as far as I know the Hubble is only orbiting Earth while it takes pictures with advanced gyroscope adjusted cameras to get steady pictures. It is not dodging billions of objects because it stays in the relative calm of earth's outer atmosphere layer.

And even if it were traveling, the odds of hitting anything would be near zero, things are so far apart from each other that if the Sun was the size of the head of a pin, the rest of the galaxy would be the size of the US!!!!

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Jeffrey, Florida — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:57:07 GMT

I wonder: How many trillions of life-forms were wiped out? And, due to distance and light-travel, we are just now witnessing something that happened nearly 1 billion years ago...talk about being late to the party!

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Andrew — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 05:29:11 GMT

Yet another incredible picture from Hubble. There needs to be 10 more Hubbles up there to allow us to learn more and more about our universe.

It's easy to forget that light is really, really slow compared to the size of the universe - until you look at pictures like this one. The picture actually shows the background galaxy as it was 780 million years ago - long before humans inhabited the earth. But since the smaller galaxy is 'slightly' closer to us, the picture actually illustrates that smaller galaxy as it was at a time that's probably significantly LESS than 780 million years ago. This means that by looking at the two galaxies together, we're actually looking at two different time periods at the same time. That's truly amazing.

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Clyde Aldridge, Seattle, Washington — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 05:34:46 GMT

Wow... pixelated blurry images for only billions of dollars. WASTE!

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jo — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 05:53:56 GMT

The coolest thing I have seen

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Darrin, Pullman, WA — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:21:32 GMT

Getting back to Alex's question, the dual meaning of the word 'satellite' causes confusion in understanding the question. Obviously there are man-made satellites (and probes, landers, etc) which are designed to explore space or provide some sort of service to us poor earthbound people. Nothing man-made has gone beyond our solar system. We do have a couple of them (Voyager, I believe is one of them) that have made it out into the kuiper belt, but you really aren't into the next solar system until you pass the halfway point to the next star. Actually, that isn't exactly true, you aren't into the next solar system until you have completely escaped one star's gravitational field and are (likely) affected by the next. So when we're looking at the dark dust in another galaxy, at the current rate that we can propel man-made objects through space, it would take more time than there has been since the beginning of the universe to get our object out that far - assuming that it doesn't get smashed along the way as you suggest. Don't believe the scifi on TV. As a race, we'd be lucky to reach another star. I seriously doubt that we'll ever invent the technology that would get us to another galaxy.

The other definition of a satellite is a natural body that orbits a planet. Our moon is such a satellite, as are the moons of Jupiter, the two large asteroids that orbit Mars - Phobos and Deimos. Short of a massively cataclysmic event, these planets stay with the planets they orbit and they get hit with space debris all the time. Just look at the surface of the moon. Since it lacks an atmosphere, it's surface catalogs a history of impacts. The planets and their moons typically only orbit one star (I suppose it is possible that a planet could somehow develop a stable orbit in a binary system.... maybe), a planet's moon really wouldn't be affected by the space dust between stars in a galaxy.

Alan - love this stuff. Keep it coming.

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Mark Wilcoxson, Winnipeg, Manitoba (by way of Huntington, Indiana) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:29:05 GMT

To 'Amazed, Arkansas' et al:

Yes, it is "hard to fathom that we're the ONLY intelligent life form in the Universe." But what if we are? What would be the implications of this reality in the conversation, say, Creation versus whatever-other-theory-of-our-origins-one-might-have?

And given that there remains only evidence for our existence and no one else's, the conversation could be and should be very interesting, indeed!

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Paul, Provo, Utah — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:06:09 GMT

We can't fix the hubble - we just blew 85 BILLION on AIG. We're out of money and government is out of control.

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james — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:17:08 GMT

getting our $$$$ worth out of Hubble...for a change!!!

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Bill, San Antonio — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:12:06 GMT

This is just marvelous!!! I wish I could come back when/if we could ever go siteseeing to these other galaxies.

Burning questions:

1. Can someone hazard a guess as to the number of stars in each the two galaxies? (Is there such a thing as avergae density in galaxies?)

2. If we built a next generation Hubble that was twice as big, how would this image be different? Clearer? More definition? Or just larger?

It's odd to think that these two galaxies could have somehow disappeared hundreds of millions of years ago and we wouldn't know about it.

The Hubble images are easily the most compelling images in existence. I wish we could divert the money spent on Iraq to worthwhile and noble purposes like this. Go ahead -- raise my taxes -- just keep these images coming, please!!!

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Mike, Rotterdam, Holland — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:13:49 GMT

Reaching for other galaxies and destroying our planet with fuel cars and by causing climate change, don't know, i can only hope that 'really' intelligent life is far away enough from us, safe from ignorant and corrupt self-destructive humans.

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Tom,Auburn Hills,Mi — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:58:46 GMT

All we are is dust in the wind

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Mark, Halifax, Nova Scotia — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:47:54 GMT

I've been a huge fan of Hubble and have enjoyed many beautiful images it has produced. Even more important is the science that has resulted from its observations.

BUT: lets not get emotional here. Hubble is old, technologically behind the times, and increasingly expensive to maintain. If the money wasted on keeping Hubble breathing was invested in NEW technology then we could have even BETTER science being done. I know people have an emotional attachment to Hubble, but there come a day you have to throw away your old, hole-ridden blankie and buy something that does a better job.

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Jameel Haniffa — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:55:16 GMT

There is no doubt at all that this show pieces are amazing. But is any one ever thought of how this could have happened with out a controller? Is it can be happend just without any base? Find out who has created these Planets, Galexies, stars, more and more. Have you ever thought of the earth, in some part they are "hanging" but in some part they are standing, some part of the world "day" but some part of the earth "night". But Allah the almighty (The master of all these creatures) describe the Sun, Moon, Earth, Galaxies, Stars and more and more. And Allah the almighty says in Al Qur'an that these planets are walking on their allocated line. For more about Planets, earth and all your questions read Al Qur'an you will get the transparent answer without any hinderence.

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Will, Paola, Kansas — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:31:22 GMT

I only holpe that when the Hubble's life is over that it's replacement can continue to provide the same amazing images.

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JH Atlanta, GA — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:38:18 GMT

I agree that the Hubble is so valuable, it is well worth dedicating one of the precious few remaining Shuttle missions to repairing it.
Great article, and interesting.
P.S. What's a couple million light years between friends?

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Paul, Cape May, NJ — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:42:24 GMT

Just curious about one thing... The wobble technique is constantly used to identify planets at distant suns. Is it not possible that instead of that being "space dust" distorting the picture, it's just gravitational/magnetic "interference" on the light from the more distant galaxy passing near the closer galaxy?

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hamza, lahore, pakistan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:27:21 GMT

AMAZINGLY AWESOME....

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Miguel Salomon, Miami, Florida — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:31:01 GMT

And most of the religions on Planet Earth still believe that we are the only "intellegent" (I have my doubts that there is any intellegent beings on Planet Earth; perhaps the dolphins, but certainly not homo sapiens) beings in the Universe and that "God" (who ever you perceive it to be) created us to master the entire Universe. Amazing!

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Fred James — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:38:42 GMT

The Hubble is so wonderful at providing a glimse of the "big bang" in postmortem. Now (hopefully) with the abilty to recreate this event, we may be able to get the earliest view and extend the process of discovery between now (relatively) and then.

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Dennis R. Connolly, Princeton , NJ — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:42:11 GMT

And we may be about to elect a Vice President who believes the Universe is 4,000 years old.

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Robert L. Glover, Woodbridge, VA — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:05:18 GMT

I think what we're all really saying here is that the Hubble needs to be maintained and we need to get these images out to everyone in this country, young and old, so as to spark a rennaissance in science and technology that will sustain us for the next 100 years or so. The magnitude of what we're seeing just in this single snapshot is more than enough to inspire the next ten generations of scientists, astrophysicists and explorers. Bottom line: we need the Hubble and we need to spark the imagination of our younger generations to come.

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torch — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:16:17 GMT

This is where we should be spending our money. Not bailing out Wall Street at our expense so the rich can stay rich! Keep the pics coming, these are astounding!

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Courtney Homes — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:19:17 GMT

I'm with Noelle on this one. Hubble is a lot of bang for the buck.

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Jerry — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:25:26 GMT

While this breathtaking view of 2 galaxies may not be a collision, it is happening all the time. The June 2008 cover story in Astronomy Magazine was about the fact that the Milky Way is on a colllision course with Andromeda.

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Brian, Fairfax, VA — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:35:37 GMT

With all the progress, and our knowledge that an unobstructed view yields such amazing pictures - let's put one on the dark side of the moon! I think a moon mission would bring public interest back

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Mark J. Dinkel — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:54:24 GMT

I hope there is some better future for Hubble than to simply burn up in the atmosphere. I have often wondered why Hubble isn't placed close to the ISS so it can be maintained and upgraded by astronauts from the ISS. Would it be that difficult to somehow tether it to the ISS?

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fadda eart — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:18:53 GMT

COOL!!!
kinda puts the squabbling of earlier posts/comments into perspective, eh?
it really is right there awaiting Human Expansion.
Awesome!

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steve smyth — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:22:11 GMT

YEAH!
take a good look...
the only thing between us and expansion throughout the Universe is stuff we put there...take that to the bank, Kids!

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Just Curious, Albuquerque, NM — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:27:36 GMT

Do scientists have any theories on the amount of dust surrounding a galaxy? Is it directly or inversely proportional to the size of the galaxy? In the picure, the dust cloud appears to be approximately equal to the diameter of the galaxy. Would the larger galaxy have a corresponding larger dust cloud or would growth of the galaxy consume part of that cloud?

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Delmar Fairchild, Barron, WI — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:35:35 GMT

From "Viking Age Triggered by Shortage of Wives", elsewhere in MSNBC:

The Viking religion held that "the cosmos began in the frozen emptiness ... and will end in fire with the last battle," said Barrett.

Laws of Thermodynamics: From Wikipedia
1st:
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed only changed from one form to another. (Universal Equalibrium)
2nd:
"The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium."
From: Entropylaw.com: to parahrase,
A way of looking at it is the cabin in the snowy woods. The cabin cools at the fastest possible rate of the constraints.

The Vikings may have had it right back a thousand years ago.

Heat energy was the most abundant form to which other energy or matter changed to.

Dark matter throughout the universe may only be heat energy (matter)that cools in the confines of our space. It has to stick around as the First law states, so it changes to Dark Matter. Perhaps finding the mechanics of how heat cools in space and retains its weight, may solve the issue of Dark Matter or Dark Energy. Dark Matter may only be the Chaos coming to the level of entropy near equalibrium. When that happens, the cold universe then falls in upon itself and starts all over again in a blast of heat and matter forming what is in the picture that the Hubble took.

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Jim McCracken, Winston-Salem, NC — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:21:29 GMT

OMG all the pseudo-science in the comments is amazing!

To respond to Alex: Satellites do not travel in straight lines. Nothing does (Einstein's theory of General Relativity - straight lines in space+time are curved lines in gravitational space) But that isn't really the point. The satellites orbit Earth. Their "straight-line" is bent into a circle around our planet. But, even that wouldn't matter... you still have the question of how the Earth misses "all that stuff out there"

Firstly, all that stuff is WAY out there. Nearly every single object you've seen in a photograph of outer space is so far away that the light took much longer than you've been alive just to reach us. Even the "nearby" objects are very, very far away. The closest star to our own is 4.5 light years away.

Really the only objects you have a chance of hitting with a satellite are objects in the solar system. Most of those objects have clearly defined orbits that will never come near us (the other planets, for instance, will never come near enough to the earth for the satellites to even feel their gravity)

There IS in fact a big issue with satellites colliding into things - but the things are pieces of other satellits, debris from launches, etc. It's currently estimated that there are 40,000 - 80,000 objects in near earth orbit larger than the head of a bolt, and nearly all of them came off of a piece of human machinery, whether intentionally or by accident. A collision with even a small object can be fatal in space due to the speeds involved...

And to answer the dark matter / viking questions; the dark matter isn't "cold heat" or "cold matter" or anything we recognize. In fact, the one thing we can say for certain about it is that it's not baryonic - meaning it's not made out of protons and neutrons. The current theory is that dark matter is made up of one or more classes of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) - particles that participate in gravity, but do not materially interact via the electromagnetic, weak, or strong forces. And that's why it's dark - it's not that it's black, or cold - it's that photons go right through it, cause it's made out of something different than you or I are...

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S.B. Stein E.B. NJ — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:53:26 GMT

Is it possible to put a Hubble like telescope (or a whole collection of telescopes that cover a wide range wavelengths) above the plane on which the planets are on? If we were to have a platform like there are in science fictions series (Mostly Star Trek), could a location like that provide better resolution?

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Thinker — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:11:05 GMT

I was wanting to ask you about dimensions and what exactly does that mean on a day to day basis. If the CERN expirements find just one thing its all woth it.

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Joe, Kalamazoo, MI — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:26:26 GMT

Remember when Hubble was a laughingstock because it was nearsighted. People weren't saying it was a lot of bang for the buck back then. It's a good thing they didn't scrap the whole program like so many folks wanted.

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Frank Glover Rochester, NY — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:00:05 GMT

"With continuous photographs such as these, how could NASA ever consider NOT keeping HUBBLE running? It is as much a jewel as any, in the sky!"

Agreed, but remember, it was designed to be human-tended, and after the next upgrade, there will be no more visits. The next serious malfunction after that, stays broken. Orion can't do it.

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Thomas Ashby, Calgary — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:16:59 GMT

Delmar Fairchild: "Perhaps finding the mechanics of how heat cools in space and retains its weight, may solve the issue of Dark Matter or Dark Energy."

Heat is radiation in the infra-red part of the spectrum. [...] It has no mass ! It is electro-magnetic energy like visible light. At best it's wavelength gets longer over time as in the microwave background that permeates all of space and corresponds to temperatures approaching absolute zero -273.15 Celsius. It's very cold in space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Atmospheric_electromagnetic_transmittance_or_opacity.jpg

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Todd, Billerica, MA — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:25:01 GMT

So if I understand this correctly..... Most of the stars we see in this picture are part of another galaxy NGC 253, and these two other galaxies are visible, but are actually behind NGC 253 just much farther away. The smaller galaxy and the larger galaxy are also separated by a large distance since there is no visible interactions between them.

Hubble has been the best investment the American people have paid for in the last 20 years of NASA.

[ALAN ADDS: Todd, I think you've got it just right on all counts.]

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Mark J. Dinkel — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:25:22 GMT

Why not use one of the new Orion capsules to move Hubble to a lunar orbit that will be more stable and allow for more indefinite operation?