The collision of two distant galaxies was caught in this new Hubble image

The pair sit about 230 million light-years away from Earth.

When worlds collide: The galaxies were originally discovered in 1784 by William Herschel and thought to be a single, unusual galaxy. Their true, dual nature was later revealed, and the pair was labeled NGC 6052. This image was caught by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.

A preview of what's to come: Something similar will eventually happen with our own Milky Way galaxy and our closest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. No need to panic: that collision is probably about 4 billion years away. Go deeper into what’s happening in this picture here.

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