New image of colliding galaxies

The Hubble Space Telescope has recently taken this spectacular photograph showing two spiral galaxies colliding with one another. They are aptly named the Antennae Galaxies because of the two glowing "tails" that have formed, looking rather like the two antennae of an insect.

New Hubble Space Telescope image of two colliding spiral galaxies. © NASA/JPL

Due to the colossal disturbances caused in the impact, the gas clouds around the edge of the galaxies have been squeezed closer together. This leads to the formation of extremely hot supergiant stars, which can be found in the small clumpy regions spread around the picture. The red areas around them are clouds of gas and dust illuminated by the light of these new stars, whilst the dark streaks are cooler dust clouds, which are too far away to be lit up and so block out the light. The two glowing orange orbs are the centres of the original galaxies where the smaller, older stars live.

The collision has been taking place over the last few hundred million years, which you might think is a long time, but compared to the age of the Universe (15,000 million years), it is a very short time indeed.

Violent, but pretty, don't you think?