The Antennae Galaxies in Collision
Explanation:
Sixty million light-years away toward the southerly constellation Corvus,
these
two large galaxies are colliding.
The cosmic train wreck captured in stunning detail in this
Hubble Space Telescope snapshot
takes hundreds of millions of years to play out.
Cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, the galaxies' individual stars don't
often collide though.
Their large clouds of molecular gas and dust do,
triggering furious episodes of star formation near the center of
the wreckage.
New star clusters and interstellar matter are jumbled and
flung far from the scene of the accident by gravitational forces.
This Hubble close-up frame is about 50,000 light-years across
at the estimated distance of the colliding galaxies.
In wider-field views their suggestive visual appearance,
with extended structures arcing for hundreds of thousands of
light-years, gives the galaxy pair its popular name,
The Antennae Galaxies.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
