Cosmic collision between two galaxies? No!!

This stunning view of apparent interactive galaxies was released by HubbleSite today, it shows a rare view of a pair of overlapping galaxies:

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 3314. The two galaxies look as if they are colliding, but they are actually separated by tens of millions of light-years, or about ten times the distance between our Milky Way and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. The chance alignment of the two galaxies, as seen from Earth, gives a unique look at the silhouetted spiral arms in the closer face-on spiral, NGC 3314A.

Full paper can be seen here with download screen-use large files as well.

Thats a really cool picture!!!! I find it amazing how one Galaxy has mostly blue stars, and the other has bright whites, yellows, etc... Does that mean One is much older than the other.??

Originally posted by Glassbender777
Thats a really cool picture!!!! I find it amazing how one Galaxy has mostly blue stars, and the other has bright whites, yellows, etc... Does that mean One is much older than the other.??

Red stars means it's moving away from us. Blue stars means it's closer.

That is not true, the color has nothing to do with which way the star is moving, but How hot the star is, a blue star is burning hotter and is starting to run out of hydrogen but has not yet begun to burn heluim. The red stars are much older and have begun to burn off helium, the star is also not as hot as a blue star.

reply to post by Glassbender777

Actually, buster2010 is right with what he says -

a star moving away from us would look slightly more red than usual because the light waves that reach us are drawn out due to the motion of the star. And conversely, a star moving towards us would look slightly more blue than usual

Source

On topic, that's an awesome pic, thanks for sharing

Kyle

Awesome picture!

Thanks for sharing!

What's even more beautiful and mind-blowing than those galaxies being so incredibly far apart, is that each star within them are light years away from all the others. It truly is impossible to fathom just how big our universe is and I wonder how many millions or billions of "Earths" are out there with inhabitants not so different than us, thinking the same things, wondering if they are alone, pondering the purpose of everything.