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Universe of the Hubble Space Telescope 2001 Calendar

Colliding galaxies are pairs (or more) of galaxies caught by the tug of their own mutual gravitation attraction. Some colliding galaxies eventually merge to form a new whole, while other colliding galaxies eventually part. In this image, the larger galaxy (on the left) is called NGC 2207, and the smaller galaxy (on the right) is called IC 2163. Strong tidal gravitational forces from galaxy NGC 2207 have stretched and distorted galaxy IC 2163, throwing off streams of gas and dust, stretching for hundreds of thousands of light years, which are just visible on the right side of the image. These two galaxies will continue to pull and tug at one another for several billion years, before they eventually merge together to form a new galaxy.