Topic: Conceiving stars

[erik]

When galaxies collide, millions or even billions of new stars are conceived.

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.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1997/34/image/b

[daphne]

heh.. got that in my mailbox - about the galaxies colliding! Was going to post it but I see you beat me to it!!   

I liked this part - "The new observations suggests most of the star clusters seen in the Antennae will eventually fall apart, dispersing their stars throughout the colliding galaxies." - had a lovely image of all those new stars spreading out throughout the galaxies!  Loved that!!

[erik]