HCG 59: Two interacting giants have released a giant stellar stream in this Compact Group, which also hosts a bursting irregular galaxy. Image Credit: Dane Kleiner/Australian Astronomical Observatory. Source: Supplied

But new images of compact galaxy groups have been snapped by a team of Australian scientists which reveal space as we’ve never seen it before.

HCG 48: This group is dominated by a massive elliptical galaxy that has presumably formed by ingesting of its neighbours. Image Credit: Dane Kleiner/Australian Astronomical Observatory. Source: Supplied

For anyone who doesn’t get how it all works, galaxies — spirals laced with nests of recent star formation, composed mainly of old red stars and numerous faint dwarfs — are the basic visible building blocks of the Universe.

Galaxies are rarely found in isolation and more often than not are found in sparse groups in a sort of galactic urban sprawl.

HCG 62: Astronomers want to understand how the galaxies which share a common halo will evolve. Image Credit: Dane Kleiner/Australian Astronomical Observatory. Source: Supplied

But every now and then, they can be found in the centre of giant clusters as more isolated compact groups known as Compact Galaxy Groups (CGS).

And it’s this phenomenon which has Aussie scientists all excited as the new images of them show dramatic differences in the way they evolve and change with time compared with galaxies in more isolated surroundings.

HCG 31: The tidal tails are clues to recent interactions, but no evidence of heated gas between the galaxies. Image Credit: Dane Kleiner/Australian Astronomical Observatory. Source: Supplied

A team led by Dr Iraklis Konstantopoulos of the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) have obtained these images of some CGS with the Dark Energy camera attached to the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO).

That may not sound exciting but this camera is able to image large areas of the sky to unprecedented faint limits.

HCG 59: Two interacting giants have released a giant stellar stream in this Compact Group, which also hosts a bursting irregular galaxy. Image Credit: Dane Kleiner/Australian Astronomical Observatory Source: Supplied

The team aims to combine these images with spectroscopic data taken with facilities of the Australian Astronomical Observatory that will reveal the velocities of the galaxies, leading to a much better understanding of their gravitational interactions.

HCG 79: Known as Seyfert’s Sextet, four of these galaxies are involved in an ongoing interaction. Image Credit: Dane Kleiner/Australian Astronomical Observatory Source: Supplied

“The imagery reveals the assembly history of these galaxies living so close to each other via their previous interactions,” Dr Konstantopoulos said.

“We look for stretched out tidal debris tails and roughly determine their ages. The time when interactions created the tidal debris and the arrangement of those ‘fossils’ tell us which galaxies interacted, and when.”

HCG 07: Galaxies in this cluster are undergoing a burst of star formation Image Credit: Dane Kleiner/Australian Astronomical Observatory Source: Supplied