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The Hubble Space Telescope has captured NGC 4676, a spectacular pair of galaxies engaged in a celestial dance of cat and mouse or, in this case, mouse and mouse. Located 300 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices, the colliding galaxies have been nicknamed "The Mice" because of the long tails of stars and gas emanating from each galaxy.
Their long tails are drawn out by strong gravitational tides rather than collisions of their individual stars. Because the distances are so large, the cosmic interaction takes place in slow motion – over hundreds of millions of years. They will probably collide again and again over the next billion years until they coalesce to form a single giant galaxy.
Image Credit: NASA, Holland Ford (JHU), the ACS Science Team and ESA
Image enhancement: Jean-Baptiste Faure
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