<p>The Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) has uncovered a collision between two spiral galaxies in the heart of the peculiar galaxy called Arp 220. The collision has provided the spark for a burst of star formation.
</p><p>The NICMOS image captures bright knots of stars forming in the heart of Arp 220. The bright, crescent moon-shaped object is a remnant core of one of the colliding galaxies. The core is a cluster of 1 billion stars. The core's half-moon shape suggests that its bottom half is obscured by a disk of dust about 300 light-years across. This disk is embedded in the core and may be swirling around a black hole. The core of the other colliding galaxy is the bright round object to the left of the crescent moon-shaped object. Both cores are about 1,200 light-years apart and are orbiting each other.
</p><p>Arp 220, located 250 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens, is the 220th object in Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.
</p><p>The image was taken with three filters. The colors have been adjusted so that, in this infrared image, blue corresponds to shorter wavelengths, red to longer wavelengths.
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The image was taken April 5, 1997.
1997-06-09
Press Release STScI-1997-17, <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1997/17/image/a">http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1997/17/image/a</a>