Zooming through the nighttime sky into the constellation Corvus the crow, deeper into the Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys image of the Antennae galaxies. The “stellar fireworks” contain brilliant young clusters of tens of thousands of stars. Orange blobs to the left and right of center are the two cores of the original galaxies, criss-crossed by dark filaments of dust seen in silhouette. Brilliant blue star clusters, born in the collision, pepper the galaxies. Pinkish glowing hydrogen gas surround star birth regions glowing under the intense energy from newborn stars.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Acknowledgment: NASA, ESA, A. Fujii, Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech, UKSTU/AAO, B. Twardy/B. Twardy/A. Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF, M. Kornmesser (ESA/Hubble), B. Whitmore (STScI), and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
