Attention. A major intragalactic collision is due imminently in the NGC 6240 galaxy, Ophiuchus constellation, northwest of the central Milky Way, 400 million light years above the celestial equator. A merger of two black holes to create one bigger one is inevitable; dramatic star formation and supernovae with luminosity equivalent to several thousand billion Suns are likely. Quasars may be activated.

This is not strictly news. The flirtation between the two “small” galaxies creating NGC 6240 began 30 million years ago (430 million if time taken for the latest images to reach Earth are included). But mankind has been photographing the clumsily waltzing cosmos with the Hubble telescope for just 18 years - a blip in time but a heartstopping leap forward in understanding, which Nasa and the European Space Agency celebrate today with the release of 59 of the Hubble's greatest pictorial hits.

Here be overlapping spiral galaxies, deep blue volcano galaxies and gas-rich ring galaxies with long-tailed pink companions. They are all impossibly vast, drawn towards each other by gravity 17 times faster than a space rocket at full tilt, yet still so slowly that “collisions” can take 100 million years. Individual stars do sometimes smash into each other. More often, galaxies comprising billions of them will reach out and adjust to each other like giant mating octopuses. Mankind is a participant as well as an observer. We are not just spinning round the Sun at 67,000mph. We are also hurtling at 300,000mph on board the Milky Way towards Andromeda, which looks set to eat us. The Times will keep you posted.