APOD: 2020 May 10 - The Porpoise Galaxy from Hubble

Belated thank you my friend Maj William W. 'Bill' Price for posting the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) for Mother's day, Sunday, May 10, 2020 entitled "The Porpoise Galaxy from Hubble."
Image: The Porpoise Galaxy from Hubble -Image Credit - NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA; Reprocessing & Copyright - Raul Villaverde

Colorized images of the creation of God in the heavens tend to be spectacular as in this case :-)

"Explanation: What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Just a few hundred million years ago, NGC 2936, the upper of the two large galaxies shown, was likely a normal spiral galaxy -- spinning, creating stars -- and minding its own business. But then it got too close to the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 2937 below and took a dive. Dubbed the Porpoise Galaxy for its iconic shape, NGC 2936 is not only being deflected but also being distorted by the close gravitational interaction. A burst of young blue stars forms the nose of the porpoise toward the right of the upper galaxy, while the center of the spiral appears as an eye. Alternatively, the galaxy pair, together known as Arp 142, look to some like a penguin protecting an egg. Either way, intricate dark dust lanes and bright blue star streams trail the troubled galaxy to the lower right. The featured re-processed image showing Arp 142 in unprecedented detail was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope last year. Arp 142 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation, coincidently, of the Water Snake (Hydra). In a billion years or so the two galaxies will likely merge into one larger galaxy."

Porpoise Song (Carole King demo)
Original piano demo by Carole King
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejVoCBpGDhc

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Great picture. When I see one of these, I always wonder if the Oort clouds of all those stars are being upset and disrupted, and are there beings like us, aware and with the technology to see the space around them, hoping and praying no disrupted comet or planetoid hits their home.