Post by glactus on Sept 15, 2008 21:57:45 GMT
The Antennae galaxies
This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Antennae galaxies (NGC 4038 - 4039) is the sharpest yet of this dynamic merging pair of structures. During the course of the collision, billions of stars will be formed. The brightest and most compact of these star birth regions are called super star clusters.
Situated in the Constellation of Corvus, the Antennae galaxies are a long way away at 63 million light years. Magnitude is 10.3
The two spiral galaxies 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. In billions of milliniums hence, the nuclei of the two galaxies will join to become one giant galactic structure.
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 appears brown in the image.
Most galaxies probably undergo at least one significant collision in their lifetimes. The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy will also suffer the same fate when they merge in a few billion years.
Credits: The Antennae galaxies: A NASA Hubble image
