View this tug-of-war between the expansion of the universe and the pull of gravity, where galaxies are caught in the middle. Gravity can cause some galaxies to collide, leaving them scarred and tattered. Others inflict glancing blows that form long tails of debris. Some even merge, radically altering the appearance of the original galaxies. The full video and segments of the video are provided below.
Copyright
These programs contain copyrighted material and should not be downloaded or used outside of this website. For further details, refer to the full copyright statement.
Credits
Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute, Office of Public Outreach
All images, illustrations, and videos courtesy of NASA, ESA, and STScI except:
- Taurus constellation drawing from Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia by Johannes Hevelius, courtesy of the United States Naval Observatory
- Large galaxy collision animation courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, B. Robertson, L. Hernquist
- Expanding universe animation courtesy of NASA
- Andromeda Galaxy image courtesy of Digitized Sky Survey 2, acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)
- Animated pan through Milky Way courtesy of ESO/M. Kornmesser/ESA/Hubble
- Animation of stars moving courtesy of Frank Summers (STScI)
- Animation of random stellar orbits courtesy of NCSA, UCLA / Keck
- Milky Way formation animation copyright Prof. Romain Teyssier (University of Zurich)
- Major and minor galaxy merger animations copyright Dr. Benjamin Moster (Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics)
- Fly-around animation of Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy courtesy of David Law (Dunlap Institute, University of Toronto)
- Animation of two colliding spiral galaxies courtesy of Volker Springel, Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics
Music courtesy of Associated Production Music
- Written by Vanessa Thomas and John Stoke
- Designed by John Godfrey and Marc Lussier