PHOTO NO.:  STScI-PRC97-34b


CLOSE-UP OF STAR FORMATION IN ANTENNAE GALAXY

These four close-up views are taken from a head-on collision between two
spiral galaxies, called the Antennae galaxies, seen at image
center. The scale bar at the top of each image is 1,500 light-years
across.

[Left images]
The collision triggers the birth of new stars in brilliant blue star clusters,
the brightest of which contains roughly a million stars.  The star 
clusters are blue because they are very young, the youngest being 
only a few million years old, a mere blink of the eye on the astronomical
time scale.

[Right images]
These close-up views of the cores of each galaxy show entrapped
dust and gas funneled into the center.  The nucleus of NGC 4038
(lower right) is obscured by dust which dims and reddens starlight 
by scattering the shorter, bluer wavelengths.  This is also the reason
the young star clusters in the dusty regions appear red instead of blue.

This natural-color image is a composite of four separately
filtered images taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2
(WFPC2), on January 20, 1996.  Resolution is 15 light-years
per pixel (picture element). 

Credit: Brad Whitmore (STScI), and NASA