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Video archive

STS-76: In review
 The STS-76 astronauts narrate highlights from the 1996 mission that launched Shannon Lucid to the Russian space station Mir.

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STS-75: In review
 The STS-75 astronauts narrate highlights from the 1996 mission that saw the tethered satellite suddenly break free from the shuttle.

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STS-72: In review
 The STS-72 astronauts narrate highlights from the 1996 mission that retrieved a Japanese satellite.

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STS-122: In review
 The STS-122 crew narrates highlights from its mission that delivered Europe's Columbus module to the space station.

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STS-100: In review
 The STS-100 astronauts narrate highlights from the April 2001 mission that installed the space station's Canadian robot arm.

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STS-102: In review
 The STS-102 astronauts narrate highlights from the March 2001 mission that conducted the first ISS resident crew exchange.

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STS-123 landing
 Shuttle Endeavour returned from space with a night landing March 26 at Kennedy Space Center.

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Plethora of interacting galaxies on Hubble's birthday
SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE NEWS RELEASE Posted: April 24, 2008
Astronomy textbooks typically present galaxies as staid, solitary, and majestic island worlds of glittering stars.
But galaxies have a wild side. They have flirtatious close encounters that sometimes end in grand mergers and overflowing "maternity wards" of new star birth as the colliding galaxies morph into wondrous new shapes.
Today, in celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope's 18th launch anniversary, 59 views of colliding galaxies constitute the largest collection of Hubble images ever released to the public. This new Hubble atlas dramatically illustrates how galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures in never-before-seen detail.

Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)
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Astronomers observe only one out of a million galaxies in the nearby
universe in the act of colliding. However, galaxy mergers were much more common long ago
when they were closer together, because the expanding universe was smaller.
Astronomers study how gravity choreographs their motions in the game of
celestial bumper cars and try to observe them in action.
For all their violence, galactic smash-ups take place at a glacial
rate by human
standards - timescales on the order of several hundred million years.
The images
in the Hubble atlas capture snapshots of the various merging galaxies
at various
stages in their collision.
Most of the 59 new Hubble images are part of a large investigation of luminous
and ultra-luminous infrared galaxies called the GOALS project (Great
Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey). This survey combines observations
from Hubble, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory,
and NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The majority of the Hubble observations
are led by Aaron S. Evans of University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony
Brook University.
The images are available here.
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