October 19, 2006—Astronomers, it turns out, like to rubberneck too.
Scientists haven't been able to take their eyes off a nearby stellar collision. This image, snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope and released October 16, is the sharpest yet of the merging Antennae Galaxies.
The spiral galaxies, named for long antenna-like arms that extend far from the galaxies' centers, began colliding only a few hundred million years ago. The pair represents one of the closest galactic collisions to Earth, and one of the youngest known to science.
The reddish-orange blobs to the right and left of the picture's center are the two galactic cores—consisting mostly of old stars crisscrossed by filaments of dust (brown).
What has researchers really excited, though, are the blue star-forming regions, which are surrounded by hot glowing hydrogen gas (pink). Billions of new stars will be formed by the energetic collision, scientists say.
The brightest and most compact star-forming regions are called super star clusters.
Image courtesy NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
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4 comments:
Totally amazing picture. I could spend hours, if I had them, looking at the pictures taken by the Hubble.
wasn't it sort of messed up a while back? the butt of jokes and all? i seem to recall that
THIS picture (i agree) is AMAZING
i want to be there
Yeah, way back during the first Shrub it had a major flaw with the main mirror. A heroic, really, repair mission gave it sort a mirror patch that brought it up to full speed. Despite the danger I hope they do one more repair mission so it can more years of operation.
There was suppose to be another project in a few years were they would send something up to try and find Earth-sized planets around other stars. If they identified a earth-sized planet with oxygen in the atmosphere it would be a very high candidate to have life we might understand since oxygen is so reactive to other elements. Free oxygen might mean life on another world. I believe the second Shrub canceled it for budget reasons.
well i for one do not believe WE are the only ones.
however, since we can't take care of ourselves, i don't want us to mess any other beings or planets or space itself, UP
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