NGC 1275: A Galactic Collision.

In NGC 1275, one galaxy is slicing through another. The disk of the dust y spiral galaxy near the image center is cutting through a large elliptical galaxy , visible predominantly on the lower left. Galaxies can change significantly during a collision like this, with gravitational tides distorting each galaxy and gas clouds being compressed and lighting up with new star formation . Galaxy collisions occur in slow motion to the human eye , with a single pass taking as much as 100 million years. NGC 1275 is a member of the Perseus cluster of galaxies that lies about 230 million light years away toward the constellation of Perseus . Each galaxy spans about 50,000 light years across. The above picture is a composite of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 and 2001.