From Wired:
To celebrate the 18th anniversary of the launch of Hubble, the Space Telescope Science Institute released 59 images of galaxies colliding. Rather than the staid and immutable image that galaxies have had in textbooks these images paint a remarkable picture of whirling, colliding, flirtatious galaxies that are crashing into each other or cozying up to produce new mega galaxies.
Although only one in a million of the galaxies closest to us are interacting, galaxies much further away (the light we are getting from them is billions of years old) are caught "in the act" more often. This is because there were more galactic collisions in the early universe, so looking farther away (which is also farther into the past) will increase your chances of seeing galaxies collide.
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