The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed a group of colliding galaxies that won a cosmic popularity contest voted on by the public.
The snapshot features Arp 274 (also known as NGC 5679), a galaxy smashup going on as three distant galaxies merge into one, drawn in by their mutual gravitational attraction. On April 1 and 2, Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 snapped the photogenic site, located about 400 million light-years away.
Arp 274 won the Space Telescope Science Institute's "You Decide" competition, which opened up a poll to determine the target of the next space portrait in honor of the "100 Hours of Astronomy" project, part of the ongoing International Year of Astronomy. The striking object received 67,021 votes out of the nearly 140,000 votes cast in the contest. Voting ended on March 1.
The two biggest galaxies are spirals that appear mostly intact. The tiny third galaxy shows more signs of disruption.
More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090403/sc_space/hubblephotographspeopleschoice (http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090403/sc_space/hubblephotographspeopleschoice)
Beautiful shot it is now my desk top.
C