This celestial firestorm is the blazing wreckage of a collision between two spiral galaxies. The two galaxies, whose bright yellow cores appear to the lower left and upper right of center, began their fateful confrontation a few hundred million years ago. Formally known as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, the pair is nicknamed the Antennae Galaxies because of two long streamers of stars, gas, and dust that extend from the crash site.

The cosmic smashup has pulled dark dust into long strands stretching from one galaxy to the other. It has also compressed huge clouds of gas and dust, igniting a rash of new star formation within the galaxies. Astronomers estimate that billions of new stars will form as the two galaxies complete their collision and eventually merge into one galaxy.

The merging galaxies contain more than a thousand young "super star clusters." Astronomers believe many of these clusters will eventually disperse, but the largest ones will survive to become giant, spherical-shaped stellar groupings called globular clusters, like those that reside in the outskirts of our own galaxy. Most globular clusters contain ancient stars and were thought to be relics of a galaxy's earliest days, but recent observations suggest that globular clusters can also be born more recently from galactic mergers like this.

About 65 million light-years away, the Antennae Galaxies make up one of the closest pairs of colliding galaxies to us. Because many (if not all) present-day, large galaxies are thought to have grown from smaller galaxies that collided and merged, studying nearby collisions such as the Antennae Galaxies helps astronomers understand how galaxies evolved over the universe's history. It might even provide insight into our own spiral galaxy's future collision with the large, spiral Andromeda Galaxy.

• Celestron C11 EdgeHD f/7
• ASI1600MM Pro -15C
• iOptron CEM120 EC2
• Moonlite Litecrawler
• Imaged with KStars
• Pixinsight and Photoshop

- Red: 30 x 120 seconds
- Green: 30 x 120 seconds
- Blue: 36 x 120 seconds
- Lum: Best 130 out of 204 180 second exposures.