👉Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope captured a striking view of Hickson Compact Group 40 (HCG 40), a closely packed cluster of galaxies located about 681 million light-years from Earth. In this scene, three spiral galaxies are clearly interacting. Their once-orderly disks are stretched and warped by each other’s gravity. Long streams of stars and gas — called tidal tails — arc outward as the galaxies pull material away while they slowly merge. Although it may look like a dramatic cras