The Hubble Space Telescope has outdone itself.
The first Hubble image was published by NASA. The background of this deep view of the universe is filled with far-off galaxies, a star shines vividly atop the frame, and two great galaxies look like they're bound to collide.
The collision is not real.
NASA said that the spiral galaxy on the left looks like it's "plunging edge-on into a neighboring galaxy." The space agency explained that it's a trick of perspective. We're looking at the same object in front of another galaxy from our spot in the spiral arm of the Milky Way. Both objects are very far away. The universe is 215 million light-years away.
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Astronomers have seen intriguing events inside the galaxies captured in this and other deep views of the universe. They've observed galaxies with both exploded massive stars and cepheid variable stars.
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken unprecedented images of the universe for over three decades. It has been operated for 1 billion seconds. Even as NASA's next generation of space telescope unfurls and unfolds in space, it's still capturing majestic images.
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