The Hubble Space Telescope turned 18 years old on April 25, and in one of the most wonderful of all traditions - that of GIVING presents on your birthday - HST is presenting the world with the largest collection of extraordinary photos it has ever released to the public: 59 spectacular images of colliding galaxies. Below is a sample of a dozen of those images.

Most of these galaxies are out of range of backyard telescopes, but there are a few you might be able to find. One of these is the colliding pair of galaxies NGC 6621 and NGC 6622 in the constellation Draco, shown on this week's sky map. You may have to wait until midnight for them to climb up out of haze of the horizon, but since the Moon doesn't rise until the wee hours, the sky will be nice and dark, and with a little luck you should be able to spot them with a six or eight inch scope. Orient yourself first with the North Star (Polaris), by using the pointer stars in the big dipper (Ursa Major), or going to the end of the handle of the little dipper Ursa Minor). Then find Vega, in the constellation Lyra, one of the brightest stars in the sky. The galaxies are about halfway between Polaris and Vega. To Hubble, high above Earth's interfering atmosphere, the galaxies look like this:

Ironically, although these Hubble photos are things of outstanding beauty, they are depictions of one of the most violent events in the Universe. The black holes at the centres of these galaxies are like two cosmic freight trains having a head on collision. The hundreds of billions of stars in each of these galaxies being tossed and turned, careening and crashing into one another, in an unimaginable crucible of violence. One can only hope that any lifeforms in the vicinity had the ability to see the collision coming, and remove themselves to calmer waters.

To View the entire Hubble birthday present, go to http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/16/image/

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The Sun is in Aries.

Current Solar Flare (X-ray) activity : Current Status of Solar Geomagnetic Field :

(Updated every ten minutes from the NOAA Space Environment Center through n3kl.org.)

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	Sunday, April 27	Monday, April 28	Tuesday, April 29	Wednesday, April 30	Thursday, May 1	Friday, May 2	Saturday, May 3
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Previously in Mexican Skies...

Jan 6 Photos Of Saturn	Jan 20 Postcards From Messenger	March 23 Life In Our Solar System	March 30 Home Sweet Home	April 6 Ten New Planets Found
April 13 Fourth Earth-like Planet Found	April 20 Saturn And Mars

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