<b>Original caption from NASA:</b> “This NASA <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope" class="extiw" title="en:Hubble Space Telescope">Hubble Space Telescope</a> image of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antennae_galaxies" class="extiw" title="en:Antennae galaxies">Antennae galaxies</a> (NGC 4038 &amp; 4039) is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. During the course of the collision, billions of stars will be formed. The brightest and most compact of these star birth regions are called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/super_star_clusters" class="extiw" title="en:super star clusters">super star clusters</a>.”<br>“
The two <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/spiral_galaxies" class="extiw" title="en:spiral galaxies">spiral galaxies</a> started to interact a few hundred million years ago, making the Antennae galaxies one of the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies. Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. The orange blobs to the left and right of image center are the two cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appear brown in the image. The two galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink.”
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
2006-10-16
<ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0615a/">http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0615a/</a></li>
<li><a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/46/image/a/">http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/46/image/a/</a> (<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2006/46/images/a/formats/full_jpg.jpg">direct link</a>)</li></ul>