Galaxy Collisions: Simulation vs Observations

A comparison of a simulation of a galaxy collision with five Hubble observations of galaxy collisions. No sound. This visualization follows the evolution of a computer simulation of two galaxies colliding. At five points, the simulation is stopped, and the geometry of the simulated galaxies are compared to five different interacting galaxy pairs observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Thus, one sees that each observation is just one snapshot of a billion-year-long process. The interacting