Fact Sheet
Colliding Stellar Nurseries
Countless new stars are being born in the pair of colliding galaxies known as the Antennae. This false-color image from Spitzer Space Telescope shows vast regions of starbirth in red. These are the regions where the two galaxies are slamming together. Gas clouds in these regions are squeezed together, allowing them to form new stars. The orbiting Spitzer telescope sees the starbirth regions clearly because they glow brightly in infrared wavelengths, which are difficult to see from Earth's surface. The blue regions, which are from a visible-light image of the Antennae, contain older stars, which form streamers that spread across many thousands of light-years. [Credit: NASA/JPL/Z. Wang (CfA), M. Rushing/NOAO]
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