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This stunning collision of two galaxies (UGC 4881) has been dubbed The Grasshopper. It has a bright curly tail containing a remarkable number of star clusters. The galaxies, located 500 million light-years away in the constellation Lynx, are thought to be halfway through a merger — the cores of the parent galaxies are still clearly separated, but their discs are overlapping.

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Hubble Photos: When Galaxies Collide

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NGC 6670

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This gorgeous pair of overlapping edge-on galaxies, called NGC 6670, glows in the infrared with more than a hundred billion times the luminosity of our sun. Scientists think that NGC 6670 has already experienced at least one close encounter and is now in the early stages of a second.

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NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)