Exploring the Antennae

Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly constellation Corvus , two large galaxies are colliding . The stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 , very rarely collide in the course of the ponderous cataclysm , lasting hundreds of millions of years. But their large clouds of molecular gas and dust often do, triggering furious episodes of star formation near the center of the cosmic wreckage . Spanning about 500 thousand light-years, this stunning composited view also reveals new star clusters and matter flung far from the scene of the accident by gravitational tidal forces. The remarkable collaborative image is a mosaic constructed using data from small and large ground-based telescopes to bring out large-scale and faint tidal streams, composited with the bright cores imaged in extreme detail by the Hubble Space Telescope. Of course , the suggestive visual appearance of the extended arcing structures gives the galaxy pair its popular name - The Antennae.