This is an image of
something called the Antennae galaxies discovered by William Herschel.
About 45 million light years away from our Milky Way.
These are actually two galaxies that are in the process of merging.
They will end up eventually as one bigger galaxy,
We have the privilege of catching it with this brilliant Hubble
Space Telescope image during the process of merging.
So what you can see here is a lot of activity.
First of all, you see a lot of light.
This is from starlight blended together
and you can see at the core of one galaxy
and the other down here with a lot of blended starlight.
But you also see disrupted structure.
You know, a few hundred million years ago these were two separate spiral galaxies.
Now they are in the process of merging and that spiral structure
has been disrupted by the gravitational pulls between the two galaxies.
And not only that, but that disruption has stirred up a lot of the gas
and the dust that were within each of the independent galaxies.
And that stirring up actually compresses some of the gas and incites
new star formation at a very vigorous pace.
So the bright purple light here that we see all around
this pair of merging galaxies are nebulae
that are really very energetically forming stars.
Their light is ionizing the surrounding gas.
It's creating these beautiful colors.
You can also see lots and lots of dust
in these regions as the galaxies merge.
So we call this a star burst because it's a burst of star formation
that's being incited and excited by the merging process of these two
originally independent galaxies.
There’s so much material in this starburst process that's being compressed that it enables
not just individual isolated stars to form, but whole clusters of stars to form.
And that creates a lot of energetic radiation
that can then light up the surrounding gas that's left over
and just makes for a brilliant picture of vibrant star formation.
So catching this in the act with Hubble,
I think is is a wonderful gift and achievement.
And I love looking at this picture for that reason.