This trick of perspective is due to the fact that one of the galaxies is closer to us than the other, but we see them in the same direction
Is this what our Milky Way Galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy will look like four billion years from now when they collide? Not really…
It may seem to you that these two spiral galaxies, in the picture, are colliding - as is expected to happen between the Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda - but in fact they are separated from each other by a distance of 20 million light years.
This trick of perspective is due to the fact that one of the galaxies is closer to us than the other, but we see them in the same direction. The image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released these days by the Space Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. The image provides astronomers with an opportunity to study the star-forming black dust trails in the smaller foreground galaxy, galaxy NGC 1334A, because these trails are clearly shadowed against the bright star-filled background of the second galaxy NGC 1334B.
The slight asymmetry of NGC 1334A may be due to a previous encounter with another, smaller, out-of-picture galaxy.
If you look closely, you can also see dozens of small, blurry galaxies in the background of the image, located at distances of billions of light years from Earth.
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It's not eye contact, it's at best an optical illusion, and that too is doubtful.
This "article" is simply to say that not every picture of two galaxies that seem to merge or collide - this is indeed the case and it is true.
But there are many actual cases of two galaxies in different stages of collision, as brought up many times on this site.
@Yossi Gader
You sound a bit like you might be a troll but I will answer you seriously.
There are no mistakes in what you wrote, but there is no problem either. In the pictures, you don't see our galaxy from the outside... you see other galaxies. You can also photograph them from the ground.
Our galaxy is not a solid object that hides the rest of the universe from us... in most directions you can see between the stars of our galaxy far beyond.
A stone fell from my heart....so you can say that we got rid of one galactic disaster....now it remains to remove it from my foot....lol.
Really, if they are not at the same distance and they are not close to each other, what is the point of telling us this fictional story?!
I thought this was a scientific site and not a grandma's story telling evening.
Yossi - see and see they photographed and are still photographing these other galaxies... (besides Andormeda)
I read the article about the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies colliding (or not colliding). But there are some things I don't understand. The Milky Way is our galaxy. The diameter of the galaxy (from memory) is about 100,000 light years. So how the hell did the Hubble telescope manage to take a picture that shows one galaxy behind another galaxy? This telescope is (still!) orbiting the Earth. Our distance from the sun is about 8 light minutes.
If it's not true I want to see proof.