HEIC0615: EMBARGOED UNTIL 15:00 (CEST)/09:00 AM EDT 17 October, 2006
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0615.html

Photo release: 
Colliding galaxies make love, not war

17-October-2006 A new Hubble image of the Antennae galaxies is the 
sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. As the two galaxies 
smash together, billions of stars are born, mostly in groups and 
clusters of stars. The brightest and most compact of these are called 
super star clusters.

The Universe is an all-action arena for some of the largest, most 
slowly evolving dramas known to mankind. A new picture taken by the 
Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space 
Telescope, shows the “sharpest ever” view of the Antennae galaxies - 
seemingly a violent clash between a pair of once isolated galaxies, but 
in reality a fertile marriage. As the two galaxies interact, billions 
of stars are born, mostly in groups and clusters of stars. The 
brightest and most compact of these are called super star clusters. 

The two spiral galaxies started to fuse together a few hundred million 
years ago making the Antenna galaxies the nearest and youngest example 
of a pair of colliding galaxies. Nearly half of the faint objects in 
the Antennae are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. 
The orange blobs to the left and right of image centre are the two 
cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-
crossed by filaments of dark brown dust. The two galaxies are dotted 
with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen 
gas, appearing in the image in pink.

The image allows astronomers to better distinguish between the stars 
and super star clusters created in the collision of two spiral 
galaxies. By age dating the clusters in the image, astronomers find 
that only about 10% of the newly formed super star clusters in the 
Antennae will live to see their ten millionth birthday. The vast 
majority of the super star clusters formed during this interaction will 
disperse, with the individual stars becoming part of the smooth 
background of the galaxy. It is however believed that about a hundred 
of the most massive clusters will survive to form regular globular 
clusters, similar to the globular clusters found in our own Milky Way 
galaxy. 

The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like “arms” 
extending far out from the nuclei of the two galaxies, best seen by 
ground-based telescopes. These “tidal tails” were formed during the 
initial encounter of the galaxies some 200 to 300 million years ago. 
They give us a preview of what may happen when our Milky Way galaxy 
will collide with the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy in several billion 
years.


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Notes for editors
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation 
between ESA and NASA.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-
ESA/Hubble Collaboration. Acknowledgement: B. Whitmore (Space 
Telescope Science Institute) and James Long (ESA/Hubble).

If you wish to no longer receive these News and Photo Releases, please 
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For more information, please contact:
Brad Whitmore
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA
Tel: +1-410-338-4474
E-mail: whitmore@stsci.edu

Lars Lindberg Christensen
Hubble/ESA, Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-89-3200-6306
Cellular: +49-173-3872-621
E-mail: lars@eso.org

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA
Tel: +1-410-338-4514
E-mail: villard@stsci.edu




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Trash can

Storyline: This image looks like a war zone, but is in reality an 
embrace. In new photos we see how many stars are born during that 
collision and also that unfortunately many the ‘children’ die shortly 
after birth.

Synonyms: Fuse/melt/merge/combine/unite/become one/blend


The violent collision of these two spiral galaxies is however 
accompanied by a peaceful event. 

From the violent embrace between 

gravitation choreographs a 

The formation of stars and star clusters takes place when huge clouds 
of gas and dust collapse under their own gravity. Scientists assume 
that in the antenna this process is triggered by shocks from the 
collision. It is also possible that the formation of a star cluster can 
trigger the formation of another star cluster. 

– scientists study the population density in the Antenna