PHOTO NO.:  STScI-PRC97-34a

[Full image]

HUBBLE REVEALS STELLAR FIREWORKS ACCOMPANYING GALAXY COLLISION  

This Hubble Space Telescope image provides a detailed 
look at a brilliant "fireworks show" at the center of a collision 
between two galaxies. Hubble has uncovered over 1,000 bright, 
young star clusters bursting to life as a result of the head-on wreck.

[Left] 
A ground-based telescopic view of the Antennae galaxies 
(known formally as NGC 4038/4039) - so named because a 
pair of long tails of luminous matter, formed by the
gravitational tidal forces of their encounter, resembles an
insect's antennae. The galaxies are located 63 million light-years 
away in the southern constellation Corvus.

[Right]
The respective cores of the twin galaxies are the orange blobs,
left and right of image center, crisscrossed by filaments of dark
dust. A wide band  of chaotic dust, called the overlap region,
stretches between the cores of the two galaxies. The sweeping spiral-
like patterns, traced by bright blue star clusters, shows the result of a
firestorm of star birth activity which was triggered by the collision.

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