Fantastic astronomy website Bad Astronomy (get it? Bad Ass…tronomy?) has word of a couple new pictures that are pretty incredible.  Both are pictures of galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, the nearest large cluster of galaxies to us – “only” about 60 million light years away. First up is NGC 4402:

Then we have NGC 4522:

The Virgo Cluster is made up of more than a thousand galaxies, packed fairly tightly together (for galaxies, anyway). The gravity they exhibit on each other causes them all to swarm around each other in crazy orbits at incredible speeds. Like, 10 million kilometers per hour. To put that in perspective, a high-powered rifle bullet may leave the muzzle at about 1,500 meters per second. That’s 5,400 km per hour.  So, some of these galaxies are whipping around over 1,800 times faster than a high-powered rifle bullet.

Now, there’s a very, very thin cloud of gas all around these galaxies, called the interstellar medium. It’s thinner than the atmosphere on Earth by a long shot. We’re talking about, like one to ten atoms per cubic centimeter. But over the massive size of a galaxy, it adds up. And when the galaxy is whipping through it at 1,800 times faster than a rifle bullet, this so-thin-you-can’t-see-it gas actually rips out the gasses within the galaxy.  What makes these pictures so cool is you can clearly see this happening.

You can grab bigger versions of the photos, including desktop wallpaper images and really big TIF files here: NGC 4022 and NGC 4522

It has been 19 years since Hubble launched in 1990. It’s initial construction, all the launches to put it in space and repair and upgrade it several times, have cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $8 billion. So, a little more than $400 million a year. Sound crazy high? Again, some numerical perspective: There are 156.3 million taxpayers in the U.S. (as of 2008) Hubble’s cost averages out to about $2.70 per year for each taxpayer. I can’t get a cup of goddamn Starbucks for that. Your tax dollars at work!