Guide to Intergalactic Travel

If looking through your own scope, it is in the Big Dipper. (For our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, read on.)
Otherwise, try to get a feed over the internet from a big scope like Palomar or Hubble.

These new departments will be coming out at an agonizingly slow pace at first, but contribute ideas and the pace will accelerate --

1. ship design
2. ship building
3. propulsion concepts

1. conventional designs -- rocket configurations and aerospaceplane configurations. Think Nineteen Fifties with rockets landing on their tails, vertical take off and landing. Or think of hypersonic transports and National Aero Space Plane, horizontal take off and landing.

2. pure space designs -- no heat shields required since there would be no entry or reentry into any atmosphere, think Institute for Advanced Study concepts, Bussard collectors, Freeman Dyson's work and the British Interplanetary Society's ideas for interstellar travel

3. post-interstellar travel designs -- ideas since the heyday of the BIS

4. science fiction designs -- sure these guys seem more off into sword & sorcery fantasy these days and maybe science fiction is dead (certainly the Golden Age of Science Fiction has passed). Star Wars? There is no sound in space. Generation ships? Oh please. Like humans can think about next week much less about the next generation. Otherwise, we would already have done something about reversing global warming. Star Trek? Maybe. Those guys do think a lot about technical matters. Though I doubt if even antimatter and dilithium crystals will deliver the velocity we need.. Firefly? Those guys gave up on better government (the Alliance is like our governments today, it tortures teen agers and children), winning star wars (the Browncoats and Independents lost) and, worst of all, getting much beyond nearby stellar systems. One compliment though, those Firefly guys understand the importance of terraforming and that humans do not want to live in tin cans (space stations). Even the Mercury astronauts used to joke about being spam in a can. I was never a big fan of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda so I don't know if they came up with any useful ideas as far as ship design goes. I did pick up on the fact that the Andromeda Ascendant had an artificial intelligence but I do not know if the avatar (played by Lexa Doig) was a robot that one could physically touch or was an advanced hologram that one could touch like the emergency medical hologram doctor on Star Trek: Voyager. Frankly, I don't care too much about the information technology of a ship. I care about the engines that make it go. Babylon Five had jump gates and Vorlons with biological ships. More about this elsewhere in this lens. Lastly, Stargate considers intergalactic travel (almost alone in TV science fiction) but it is demoralizing with the "same old, same old' wars, parasites, wormholes, and lack of convincing speculation as to how IGT is engineered. Going to other galaxies just to fight still more wars is the biggest turn off of this disappointment. Apparently, writers in Hollywood cannot even conceive of a universe without war.

5. radical designs

E-mail has made our world smaller and not always in good ways. There are children (and some adults) who do not know how to properly address an envelope as a result. Let's revive this lost art:

1 Your Street
Your Town, Your State or Province (or Prefecture)
Postal or Zip Code
Your Country
Your Continent (Oceania for instance)
Earth
Solar System
Vela Asterism
Orion Spur
Cygnus Arm
Milky Way Galaxy
Milky Way Multiplet
The Local Group
The Local Cluster
Ursa Major-Canes Venatici Cloud
Virgo Supercluster
Pisces-Cetus Complex
Melchiori's Universe
Our Multiverse
Our Pluriverse
The Cosmos

There is nothing bigger than the cosmos because (by definition) it is everything: all creation, heaven, hell, limbo, purgatory, everything but God the Creator. It might fascinate you to know that this cosmic address took years of research and includes the findings of astronomers as well as cutting edge theoretical work by astrophysicists and cosmologists. However, it is subject to updating. For example, our universe was formerly called Friedman's Universe based on that understanding of it. The Melchiori model may be dated. We stand corrected if that is appropriate.

Pray that you are never abducted by inconsiderate aliens who dump you on some world on the other side of creation. If so, memorizing this address could get you home. You don't want to sound stupid if a helpful extraterrestrial offers to take you home and you don't know where home is. Makes everybody from Earth look stupid.

ET: "Where are you from?"
You: "Earth.
ET: "What is that?"
You: "A planet."
ET: "Where is it?"
You: "In the Solar System."

So far so good. Your education might get you home.

ET: "In what galaxy?"
You: "The Milky Way. We're not in the Milky Way?"
ET: "No. Where is this Milky Way galaxy?"

There are more galaxies in the universe (trillions) than there are stars in the Milky Way (billions). You'll never get home because you don't know where home is. Most of us, if kidnapped and taken to a foreign country, could find our way back to our home country with help from strangers. Learn the cosmic address. You might be the first alien abductee to come home in one piece.

The Solar System
The Alpha Centauri System
The Barnard's Star System

A multiplet is simply a primary galaxy and the satellite galaxies that orbit it. The Milky Way is the primary galaxy of the Milky Way Multiplet (no surprise there).

The satellites and their distance from Earth in kilo parsecs are:
Snickers - ?
Greater Magellanic (aka Larger Magellanic or Nubecula Major) - 54
Smaller Magellanic (Nubecula Minor) - 60
The Remnant - ?
Sculptor - 110
Ursa Minor - 67
Draco - 75
Carina - 85
Fornax - 130
Sextans - 85
Leo (I, II, III or IV) - ? (The problem here is not only distance but the fact that the name "Leo" has been slapped on so many astronomical objects.)

[Note: Since I wrote this module, I have been told that the Milky Way has more satellite galaxies. Well if true, then I need to know the names of these discoveries. Several small galaxies that used to be considered as satellites orbiting the Milky Way have lately been found to be too distant to be orbiting. For example, if it is as far out as Andromeda, then common sense would tell you that something is not right.]

Center: lies between the Milky Way and Andromeda
Radius: one point five mega parsecs
[One parsec is 3.26 light-years]
Diameter: three mega parsecs

Notable named members of the Local Group:

1. Milky Way Multiplet
Satellites: eleven known as of this writing

2. Andromeda-Triangulum Multiplet
Primaries: Andromeda and Triangulum
Satellites: include the Van den Bergh galaxies (And. I, And. II & And. III) and four others, seven total as of this writing

3. Wolf Lundmark Melotte
Note: this is one galaxy not three. It was named after the three astronomers who discovered it.

4. Barnard's Galaxy
Notes: It is named after E. E. Barnard who saw it as a nebula in his five-inch refractor (telescope) in 1884.

5. IC 1613
Note: also known as DDO 8
6. IC 10
7. The Pegasus Dwarf Galaxy
8. System 3
Note: also known as "Local Group System 3"
9. The Aquarius Dwarf Galaxy
10. IC 5152
11. Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular Galaxy
12. Leo A
Note: not to be confused with the Leo dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way
13. GR 8
Note: once thought to be part of another group, now officially a member of The Local Group
14. UGC-A86
Note: In 1990, discovered to be part of The Local Group by the Hale telescope. This proves that ground-based observatories can hold their own with space-based telescopes.
15. Regulus
16. Tucana Dwarf
Note: one of the newest discovered members of The Local Group

Maffei Multiplet
note: because of its relative motion and velocity, Maffei has been kicked out of official lists of members of the Local Group because it is not moving with the group independent of the "Hubble flow" (expansion of the universe).

NGC 247 and Sextans A (not to be confused with the Sextans dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way) have also been classified as no longer members of The Local Group.

Neighbors:
M 81 Group - the group nearest The Local Group
M 101 Group - dominated by the Pinwheel Galaxy

The Local Cluster consists of The Local Group (our home), The M 81 Group (the nearest neighboring group), and the M 101 Group (the most spectacular group around). In a future update of this module, we'll discuss the nearest cluster to The Local Cluster and other places we ought to visit in person instead of staring up through telescopes.

But first, we ought to get some idea of what's out there before we get aboard a galaxyship and step on the accelerator. Andromeda, it turns out, is a radiation hazard. It has long been regarded as the most obvious destination for the first intergalactic voyage. I am calling that into question. Maybe Triangulum is a better destination. Maybe Maffei is a better destination. I think we'll visit Snickers or the Magellanic Clouds as a warm-up for the real power trips. Just like we visited the moon before we set our sights on Mars.

You less venturesome souls out there are saying: "Let's go to Alpha Centauri or Proxima Centauri before even thinking about intergalactic travel." Do I need to remind you that the Europeans went around the world before anybody thought to go to the North Pole? The North Pole is considerably closer to Portugal or Spain than the antipodes. And the Magellanic Clouds are named for that circumnavigator.

You want to go to Mars? Build your planetship. You want to go to Alpha Centauri? Build your starship. But this place is for galaxyship builders. We make no apologies for that.

1. Space is neither flat nor two-dimensional but even professional astronomers treat it as if it were.
2. Space has at least three spatial dimensions. [We are not concerned right now with time]
3. If two objects appear in the telescope or an astronomical photo, only a fool would assume that the two objects are close to each other but this is exactly the sort of thing that the conventional approach to astronomy encourages.
4. Astrology is not science. It is pseudo-science for people who flunked real science in school.
5. The teaching of the astrological zodiac and other constellations to children can retard their understanding of space. The stars of the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper are not near each other in three-dimensional space. Only rarely are the stars in constellations actually near each other. The Pleiades is one of those exceptions. Each culture of ancient Earth had its own constellations in the night sky. It is like seeing shapes in cumulus clouds on a fair day. If we were dreaming up constellations today, we would see cell phones and computers.
6. The only real use of constellations is in orienteering and navigation. If we traveled to the far side of the Milky Way from us, all our familiar "constellations" would be gone because the relative positions of stars would have changed. This is not true of galaxies. They would still be in the same direction in the night sky if we looked at them from a planet on the far side of the Milky Way.
7. We are inside the Milky Way. We have photos of other galaxies but no complete photo of the Milky Way. We are pretty sure that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy like Andromeda and similar in appearance to it. We do not know for sure. What you see in a very dark sky is the disk edge on looking towards the center of our galaxy. That's what the Romans called "The Milky Way" and how our home galaxy got its name.
8. We would need to travel in perpendicular fashion at right angles above the plane of the Milky Way to properly take its picture. We did not have a whole Earth photo until the Apollo astronauts went to the moon and were therefore sufficiently far away to get the whole planet in one photo. If not for that photo, we might not have an environmental movement. Green. Clean air. Clean water. That's a good thing. Can you imagine what impact the first photo of the Milky Way will have? It might stop wars. The real trick is getting everybody in the Milky Way to say cheese when galactonauts take the picture.
9. Beware the word "cluster" whenever you encounter it in astronomy. Stellar astronomers use it several ways when talking about little objects within the Milky Way. Extragalactic astronomers use it to mean big geographic objects larger than the Local Group. The Local Group is part of the Local Cluster. Clusters aggregate into clouds. Clouds aggregate into superclusters. Superclusters aggregate into complexes. And about two dozen or so complexes make up the known universe. The best book on space geography is Galaxies by Timothy Ferris. [Needless to say, extragalactic astronomers abuse the word "cloud" the same way they misapply cluster. Follow the guidelines I offer and you will stay sane and not tear out your hair in frustration.]
10. On top of bad astronomy education is bad astronomy reporting. The news adds to the chaos when they report: "Astronomers have discovered the most distant object yet." Okay. What type of object? A black hole, a quasar, a galaxy, a supercluster, what? What is the object called? What name has it been assigned in case you want to Google it? What observatory or astronomer or team discovered it? Is it as distant as the Red Limit? Put it in context. Where is the object? In what supercluster is it located? Which way do I point my telescope? Got a three-D map? Why are you reporting this? Is it just to frustrate amateur astronomers or is it to make people who are not professional astronomers feel stupid? How do we get more information? Is the information at ABC News dot com or CBS News dot com or NBC News dot com or CNN? This is what goes through my mind when I hear an extragalactic astronomy report on the news.

Dear CEO of news organization,

Do not insult the intelligence of the public. Do not act as if the average Joe or Jane is not interested in the universe. Taxpayers, voters, citizens, civilians, and just plain people read NASA the riot act when it proposed to decommission The Hubble. That's our property! That's our window on the universe. Don't you dare deny us The High Frontier. This country was built on the frontier. And, apparently, people all over the world love The Hubble as much as we do. And if I was starving to death, I would give my last penny to keep it in orbit. So Mister Head of News Organization, don't talk down to us! Don't toss out random trivia. Give us space news in an organized manner.

Sincerely,
John Q. Public.

They named the appliances after this one if you go by the TV commercials shown in the Nineteen Sixties.

The image overstates it a bit but radical approach to design is warranted when it comes to designing galaxyships and their supporting infrastructure.

Rockets will not get us to any useful speed. Not even ion rockets. The US Air Force is studying antimatter for propulsion so we can begin to think about matter-antimatter annihilation as a propulsion strategy. But it won't be enough. Not by a long shot.

For the mathematicians and engineers, specific impulse will probably not be a useful concept when the assumptions themselves are called into question.

Think referential stasis. Think non-propellant based propulsion. Think MHD. Think beyond MHD. Think magnetic drives. Think gravity drives. Think fifth force of physics. Think about tachyons even though it drives string theorists up the wall. [Much more about tachyons in a future module] Think hyperluminal drive. Think above one billion celeritas.

Forget about anything below one billion times the speed of light because below that velocity, the galaxyship is essentially stopped dead in space drifting between galaxies on voyages of too long a duration for humans to suffer through. And we are not sending machines in our place. We are humans not gadgets. We must design ships for the comfort of people not robots. Voyages must never exceed ten years because beyond that we might go stir crazy with cabin fever. Sleeper ships would be expensive wastes of money because getting there should be half the fun.

Yes fun. We should not apologize for wanting space travel to be fun instead of an ordeal.

You're saying that sleeper ships could be put on autopilot. Our response to that is in the above paragraphs and the probability of hitting something in space en route. No. Live pilots and crew is the way to go.

Galaxyship designers and engineers will be speed junkies (not the drug stupid, the galaxyships).

(not the kind you cash)

but one of these will

otherwise our a-- mule or horse is up in the air because the wagon to the stars is too heavy

if we have to pass underneath bridges

The stuff is no good if it is flat.

On a serious note, I am reminded by the bubble wrap of reading a science fiction story about really really advanced seat belts and airbags (actually passive restraint system) where the entire ship was designed to absorb shock and if it passed the breaking point (the ship hit a gas nebula at relativistic speed) then the ship was designed to break into pieces that were life boats and would re-assemble later. The passengers were automatically dropped beforehand into cushion pods within the lifeboats. Does anyone remember the name and author of the story? I forget.

but you get the idea.

(Their parents must be really worried about these two hitch-hiking without a guide to the galaxies)

The Point is a site that is being explored as a place to, in their words, "make something happen." In going about the business of setting up an account to organize a campaign, several issues arise.

1. We don't have a treasurer or anyone we trust to handle money other than IGT society founders. Some IGT societies have included The Galactic Society (or TGS) and Galactic Society International (or GSI). We cannot drop their names because we don't have their permission. In the meantime, a CMA (certified management accountant) might be a solution but we have to pay them which we can't do since we haven't raised any money yet. Hence the need for a charter meeting to elect provisional officers including a treasurer. We can't really trust a CPA because unlike CMA's, CPA's can't keep a secret and they have a track record of absconding to places like Brazil. CMA's are private. CPA's are public. That's what the P in CPA means. Apologies to all the accountants I've offended. You should be more honest!

2. The Point doesn't have space as a category but there is always a first and they do allow for suggestions and technology is a category. Of course, huge parts of the IGT project are not technology hence the need to properly categorize ourselves.

3. The Point FAQ mentions credit cards and fees. Direct quotation:

"Are there any fees?

The Point takes 5% of each campaign to cover the credit card and administrative fees."

End quote.

Overall though in my humble opinion, the negatives are far outweighed by the positives.

Quotation from the site:

3D modeling for everyone

"SketchUp is the finest (and most innovative) tool available for anyone designing anything from coffee pots to skyscrapers."
- McCall & Associates

Before you ask, the above is not _THE_ Robert T. McCall.

Robert T. McCall, Space Artist, Dies at 90

By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: March 5, 2010 New York Times

Robert T. McCall, an artist whose fervor for space exploration found expression in his six-story-tall mural at the National Air and Space Museum and two postage stamps canceled on the Moon, died on Feb. 26 in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 90.

[and he also did the iconic 2001: a space odyssey poster]

of Galactic Society International

Academia.edu

Epernicus

ResearchGate

ScienceStage

Australia -- it's got Outback, Cape York, and scramjet research at universities

Japan - pro-innovation people, companies and even government (despite those who say governments can't innovate)

Britain -

Germany - good engineers

China - secret police; millions of hackers eager to prove their patriotism by harassing dissidents, stealing secrets from foreigners and crashing their systems (so if we go dark you'll know it was them); and the Great Firewall of China. The government doesn't even deny the existence of it. They are moving from general censorship to targeting specific people. These are all reasons why we're getting out of the Milky Way. On the plus side, their architects design some really cool buildings. And despite hating cultural innovation, they like technical innovation. Overall, no balance.

Russia - ditto, a nation run by the KGB. On the plus side, Russians know how to get into space. They're better at it than ANYBODY else. They have launched rockets in blizzards.

USA - NASA stops a countdown for rain. Granted, Florida has more lightning strikes than Russia but still they look like pansies by comparison. Further, the USA never had a Concorde (unlike France) or a bullet train/TGV (unlike France). So why would anyone expect transportation innovation from a country that still has no mass-produced all-electric car? Japan has the Leaf and before it the Prius. GM ground up the EV-1 and the Chevy Volt can't climb a hill. And it catches on fire.

France - in addition to numerous strengths, France has a modern internet system

India - great engineers, mathematicians, scientists, and the list goes on. Infrastructure and security problems though.

We need a country that will encourage innovation but leave us in peace to do our R&D.

We don't need a country that will send in spies, steal our research, harass us and generally sour us on the human race. After all, we're humans ourselves. We just want a bright present, a brighter future, freedom, and evolution. Bureaucrats and backward religions fear evolution. (God forbid that humans should become better people less evil and less crazy and less stupid) That's why we need distance to grow as individuals and as a new civilization.

I don't see the resemblance but that's the name.

I know what you're thinking. No, not that line from Dirty Harry. You're thinking: Why waste space showing images of satellites other than satellites of the Milky Way? Because some of those satellites outside our multiplet are interesting in their own right.

The irregular dwarf galaxy Holmberg IX, a satellite of M 81, is visible almost only in ultraviolet light. This is, because it largely consists of young, hot, blue stars. Kids. What can you do with them?

When we get a better image of Holmberg IX, we'll show it.

complete with tobacco spit (oh gross!)

It got the name because it looks like a comet.

Obviously a ring type of galaxy. You can even see a distant galaxy through the hole.

and if somebody has an image of the third Magellanic (the Remnant), then we'll post it.

if anyone has an IMAX screen, there are 64 meg and larger images of this galaxy

Don't let the unimpressive images of this and Maffei 1 fool you. We have to look through the zone of avoidance just to see half the universe around us in every direction. The Zone of Avoidance (ZOA) is the area of the night sky that is obscured by our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

Maffei 1 and Maffei 2 are two of the biggest galaxies in the Local Group other than Andromeda. What else is hiding behind the blinding light of our galaxy's center? Projects to survey the Zone of Avoidance at radio wavelengths, particularly using the 21 cm spin-flip emission line of neutral atomic hydrogen (known in astronomical parlance as HI), have detected many galaxies that could not be detected in the infrared. Examples of galaxies detected from their HI emission include Dwingeloo 1 and Dwingeloo 2. (thanks Wikipedia)

Out at the extreme of what instruments can detect is this galaxy. You know it must be extreme magnification because about all we have is blurred pixels. It is the third dimmest galaxy known.

Obviously the dimmest must actually be a black galaxy giving zero optical light or maybe a galaxy consisting entirely of nebulae like the Coal Sack (dark dust clouds in space) which might be darker than black holes because black holes cause anything nearby to strain against their gravitational force -- which usually translates as light or radiation at some wavelength.

Willman 1 is a satellite of the Milky Way!

We don't have an image of Komossa's Object because we can't find one. Please somebody send us an image of it.

What makes Komossa's Object interesting? It is a galaxy that is ejecting its supermassive black hole. Any galaxy that can pull off that trick is worth a look. Whether by natural forces of astrophysics or by some extraterrestrial alien technology, the idea of kicking one of these unhealthy neighbors out is cool. No one wants to be sucked into a black hole -- let alone a supermassive black hole. (and ultramassive ones exist in the universe also).

1. The physics of tachyons
Wall, Ernst L ( 1995 ) ( Book, Periodical, Manuscript )
Source: Library of Congress Online Catalog
2. A derivation of electro-weak theory based on an extension of special relativity, black hole tachyons & tachyons of any spin
Blaha, Stephen ( c2006 ) ( Book, Periodical, Manuscript )
Source: Library of Congress Online Catalog
3. Tachyons, monopoles, and related topics : proceedings of the first session of the interdisciplinary seminars on tachyons and related topics, Erice, 1-15 September, 1976
( 1978 ) ( Book, Periodical, Manuscript )
Source: Library of Congress Online Catalog
4. Physics beyond the light barrier : the source of parity violation, tachyons, and a derivation of standard model features
Blaha, Stephen ( c2007 ) ( Book, Periodical, Manuscript )
Source: Library of Congress Online Catalog
5. The tachyon and its fields
Kowalczyn%u0301ski, Jerzy Klemens ( 1996 ) ( Book, Periodical, Manuscript )
Source: Library of Congress Online Catalog
6. The web of space-time; a step-by-step exploration of relativity
Struble, Mitch ( [1973] ) ( Book, Periodical, Manuscript )
Source: Library of Congress Online Catalog
7. The reality of the future : an essay on time, causation, and backward causation
Faye, Jan ( c1989 ) ( Book, Periodical, Manuscript )
Source: Library of Congress Online Catalog
8. Cosmic rays at ground level
( [1973] ) ( Book, Periodical, Manuscript )
Source: Library of Congress Online Catalog

IBM built a trivia machine named Watson prompting Ken Jennings to write: "I for one welcome our new computer overlords." Not that funny. Google is building a driverless car prompting a Dodge Charger commercial to say: "We've seen that movie; it ends with robots harvesting our bodies for energy." Again, not that funny.

The IGT project will of course use AI and robotics to get galaxyships built. We'll use any tool that works. But our goal is not to serve machines. Our goal is human intergalactic travel. We'll use probes but space is for humans not machines. One can get only so excited watching robots explore Jupiter and Saturn. We want to go. Machines only serve to make our journey safer not to take our place.

Surely there are companies large or small that would sponsor the early phases of our research. We are NOT giving away the farm or giving away the store as the expression goes but industries like communications, energy, transportation, and computing (to name a few) will benefit by an association with us. Check with any physicist if you doubt that assertion.

The military will also benefit (no surprise there) which is a motivation to get out of the Milky Way before politicians blow it up in wars they foment between colonies and with aliens. I use the term aliens instead of extraterrestrials because once we colonize the Moon and Mars we humans are technically extraterrestrials in the strict sense of the word.

As anyone who has visited this lens before knows, it will be centuries before all of humanity gets war out of its collective conscious. As a subset of humanity, we IGT folk don't have the patience to wait centuries until the rest of the human race grows up and matures out of the juvenile need to kill. We could get vaporized or infected with some super-Ebola in the meantime. We want to leave war and crime behind by finding uninhabited unclaimed galaxies to colonize. And we want to do this yesterday.

megafunding
NGO's
nonprofits
The Third Sector
trust funds
endowments
financial engineering
economics
accounting

A picture from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy cluster MACS 1206, which is 4.5 billion light-years from Earth. The cluster's gravity is powerful enough to visibly bend the path of light, somewhat like a magnifying glass.

{source of the following is Alan Boyle}
"Scientists are using funhouse images of faraway galaxies to learn how dark matter shaped the cosmos we see today. This picture from the Hubble Space Telescope, with the monster galaxy cluster MACS J1206.2-0847 (or MACS 1206 for short) at the center, illustrates how gravitational lenses can focus on phenomena that would otherwise go unseen.

Notice how a lot of the galaxies surrounding the central smudge of light have been distorted into thin arcs of light. That's due to the light-bending effect of the massive MACS 1206, as dictated by Einstein's general theory of relativity. Astronomers can do a careful analysis of those distortion effects to figure out just how massive the galaxy cluster is, and even where the mass is most concentrated.

Scientists have known for a long time that such galaxy clusters are much more massive than they thought they'd be, based on how much light they're giving out. The motions of galaxies suggest that visible matter makes up 15 percent or less of the universe's total mass. The rest of the stuff is the dark matter. It's not yet clear exactly what dark matter is, but scientists suspect it consists of exotic particles that don't interact much with the "ordinary" matter we all know and love.

MACS 1206, which lies 4.5 billion light-years from Earth, is one of 25 galaxy clusters that have been targeted by an effort known as the Cluster Lensing and Supernova Survey Using Hubble, or CLASH. So far, the effort has completed its observations for six of the clusters. By analyzing variations in the gravitational effects, the CLASH team hopes to map out how dark matter's effect has shaped galaxy clusters over time."

This image of a pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273 was released to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. The distorted shape of the larger of the two galaxies shows signs of tidal interactions with the smaller of the two. It is thought that the smaller galaxy has actually passed through the larger one.

. . . before something like this happens.