The Black Eye Galaxy, M64. M64’s nickname comes from its striking dark band of dust. The galaxy has an unusual ring of gas and stars that rotates the opposite way to the gas and stars closer to the centre. These and the black eye are thought to have resulted from a collision with another galaxy.

Sombrero Spiral Galaxy, M104. Astronomers named this galaxy the sombrero, after the broad brim and bulge in its centre. However, an infra-red picture has since revealed it to be two galaxies: a red disk galaxy surrounded by a bulging elliptical galaxy not visible in this image.

Grand spiral, NGC 1232. This grand spiral is twice the size of the Milky Way and about 100 million light years away. Astronomers detected blue, red and ultra-violet light from the galaxy to make the composite image, which shows older reddish stars near the centre and young, blue stars in the spiral arms.

The Rose, UGC 1810 and UGC 1813. UGC 1813 forms the stem of this ‘rose’, with gravitational forces distorting the spiral of the upper galaxy, UGC 1810, into its flower-like shape. The unusual asymmetric spiral in UGC 1810 is thought to be evidence that the smaller galaxy plunged through its side.

Radio Galaxy Hercules A, 3C 348. Hercules A, the fuzzy structure at the centre of this image, looked like a typical elliptical galaxy until astronomers used radio waves to take a fresh look. They discovered two plasma jets – streams of gas ions – powered by a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s centre.

The Antennae, NGC 4038. A tangled mess resulted from the violent collision between two spiral galaxies, the remains of which are in the top-left and bottom-middle of the image. The galaxy’s nickname comes from antenna-like tails created by the collision, though these are not visible in this image.

The Whirlpool Galaxy, M51 The whirlpool galaxy is one of the brightest galaxies in the sky. At 31 million light-years away, it’s relatively close to Earth, and is visible with a powerful pair of binoculars. A spectacular example of a spiral galaxy, it has particularly well-defined arms that sweep around its centre.

Andromeda, M31 At 2.5 million light years away, the Andromeda spiral galaxy is our nearest large galactic neighbour, named after a mythical Greek princess. Andromeda is thought to contain up to one trillion stars and, along with the Milky Way, dominates our local group of over 30 galaxies.

The Tadpole Galaxy, UGC 10214 The peculiar-looking tadpole galaxy was produced by a collision with a smaller dwarf galaxy that can be seen hiding behind the top right head of the tadpole. Forces of gravity between the two galaxies stripped off a 280,000-light-year-long, star-filled tail from the dwarf galaxy.

NGC 1672. The spiral arms of NGC 1672 spread out from a central starry bar. Bars like these are thought to funnel large amounts of dust and gas towards the centre of the galaxy, fuelling the birth of new stars. It’s thought that this bar is also feeding a supermassive black hole.

The Hubble Extreme Deep Field. This image looks back 13.2 billion years in time to when the universe was approximately 600 million years old. The Hubble Telescope was used to look at an area equivalent to just a tiny fraction of the space the Moon takes up in the sky, but which nevertheless revealed many thousands of galaxies.

Cartwheel Galaxy. An unusual head-on collision caused the cartwheel effect in this galaxy. The violent impact caused a tidal wave of dust and gas to spread out from its centre, which created the outer ring. The dust and gas fed the formation of bright blue stars in the ring.

NGC 2623. The two tails on this galaxy are tell-tale signs that it was formed when two smaller galaxies merged. The tails of stars and dust are stripped off each galaxy by the gravitational pull between the two. A supermassive black hole sits at the centre of this galaxy.

NGC 1309. A beautiful example of a spiral galaxy, NGC 1309 is also of interest for the supernova observed there in 2002. Supernovae like the one seen in NGC 1309 helped astronomers calibrate cosmic measurements of distance, and work out that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace.

NGC 5033. In this stunning image of the NGC 5033 spiral galaxy, the dark cloudy dust lanes are easy to make out, close to the centre. Dust plays a crucial role in star formation, including the protection of newly formed molecules from destructive ultraviolet radiation.

Triangulum, M33. Also known as the pinwheel, the Triangulum galaxy is named after the constellation it is found in. It is the third biggest galaxy in our local group after Andromeda and the Milky Way. Pink regions of star formation intermingle with blue clusters of stars and cloudy dust lanes.