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NGC_4038_V3.3.jpg, Stephen Duffy

NGC_4038_V3.3.jpg

NGC_4038_V3.3.jpg, Stephen Duffy

NGC_4038_V3.3.jpg

Description

The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like "arms" extending far out from the nuclei of the two galaxies, 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 collides with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy in several billion years.
The two spiral galaxies started to interact a few hundred million years ago, making the Antennae galaxies one of the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies. During the course of this collision, billions of stars will be formed. The brightest and most compact of these star birth regions are called super star clusters. Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. The orange blobs in the lobes are the two cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appears brown in the image. The two galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink.
By age dating the clusters in the image, astronomers find that only about 10 percent of the newly formed super star clusters in the Antennae will survive beyond the first 10 million years. 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.
Text from Hubblesite.org
RGB binned 2x2 with synthetic luminance
7 hours exposure per filter
Scope: TEC140, Camera QSI683, Mount MYT
Reprocessed March 2023

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NGC_4038_V3.3.jpg, Stephen Duffy