This week’s picture from the Hubble Space Telescope exhibits one thing of an optical phantasm: two galaxies that look like colliding however are in truth merely overlapping by probability. Located greater than a billion light-years away, the pair are two spiral galaxies, one face-on and one at an angle, which overlap to kind a particular form.

The galaxies, named SDSS J115331 and LEDA 2073461, have been captured utilizing Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument.

“Despite appearing to collide in this image, the alignment of the two galaxies is likely just by chance – the two are not actually interacting,” Hubble scientists write. “While these two galaxies might simply be ships that pass in the night, Hubble has captured a dazzling array of other, truly interacting galaxies.”

Some earlier Hubble pictures of really interacting galaxies embody the galaxies NGC 7469 and IC 5283, that are shut sufficient collectively to be identified by a shared identify, Arp 298. In this pair, one bigger barred spiral galaxy is slowly merging with a smaller companion galaxy. And earlier this yr, Hubble captured one other galactic merger in a system often called the Angel Wing, the place the merging galaxies have created a wing-like form.

A Hubble picture from final yr confirmed how excessive circumstances in galactic mergers can pull galaxies into completely different shapes as spiral arms can turn into distorted by the big gravitational forces concerned in interactions. These interactions may end up in streams of matter flowing between two interacting galaxies as they transfer shut collectively.

Finally, one in every of Hubble’s most spectacular pictures of galaxies interacting needs to be its portrait of an object referred to as NCG 1741, the place at least 4 dwarf galaxies are discovered inside 75,000 light-years of one another. All 4 of those galaxies would match inside the house taken up by the Milky Way, and finally, your complete group is predicted to finish up as one single merged galaxy.

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