The Antennae
April 30th, 2011
Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly
constellation
Corvus, two large galaxies
collided.
But the stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as
NGC 4038
and NGC 4039, don't collide in the course of the
ponderous event,
lasting hundreds of millions of years.
Instead, their large clouds of
molecular
gas and dust do, triggering furious
episodes of star formation near the center of the
cosmic wreckage.
Spanning about 500 thousand light-years,
this
stunning view also reveals new star clusters and
matter flung far from the scene
of the accident by
gravitational
tidal forces.
Of course,
the suggestive visual appearance of the extended arcing structures
gives the galaxy pair its popular name - The Antennae.
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