It's the best kind of space picture: a collection of bizarre galaxies with freakish shapes. Who cares about those boring spiral arm galaxies when you can have the smooshed ass galaxy, or two galaxies crashing into each other? These misshapen beauties were captured by a research consortium called AEGIS, which just released a bunch of images taken by ultra-high-powered telescope arrays that show us heretofore-unseen vistas of
deep space. Of course, the farther you peer into the depths of the universe, the further you travel back in time, so these images are all from the early years of our universe.
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See that cool pattern around this edge-on spiral galaxy, NGC 5907? The one that sort of looks like two halos? Those are the only remains of another galaxy, which NGC 5907 slaughtered in cold blood. (Or maybe cold dark matter?) We've shown you galaxies colliding before, but here's an arresting look at the aftermath of one of those galactic hit-and-runs, courtesy of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. These "stellar fossils," or "ghost galaxies," result from the spiral galaxy's collision with a dwarf galaxy, which it mostly absorbed. Click through to see a bigger image, plus a look at NGC 4013's "ghost trail."
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