A Sky Full of Galaxies, and What Else?

The farther out from Earth you look into space, the more galaxies you see. As you let your eyes roam around this recently released Hubble Space Telescope image, notice how many galaxies you see. Not sure what’s a galaxy? Look for things that are kind of cigar-shaped, or with spiral shapes. Some galaxies in this image may look blobby or irregular. There are hundreds of them in this image.

The objects with crosshairs on them? Those are stars that lie fairly close to us. The blue cloud of light off to the bottom left? That’s why this picture was taken. It’s a portion of a galaxy called that is being disrupted by an encounter with another galaxy. The two together are called NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, and nicknamed the Antennae. They lie about 45 million light-years away from us (and all those other galaxies lie at least that far away, or more). As they merge together, the gravitational influences of the two are warping them, and sending out two tails of gas. The blue color comes from the new stars that are being born under the influence of this galactic commingling. Star formation is a major “effect” of galaxy collisions, and contributes to the long-term evolution of galaxies and the stars they contain.

(Images Credit:NASA, ESA & Ivo Saviane (European Southern Observatory)/Robert Gendler)