Humans on earth are the equivalent of ants on a football, restricted in their perception of the brilliance of the cosmos that surrounds them. However unlike ants, humanity can marvel the mysteries of the universe without stepping out of its backyard!
It's been nearly 400 years since Galileo observed the heavens through the first telescope. Four centuries later, the Hubble Space Telescope with its cutting-edge technology, continues to probe the corners of the universe trying to answer the questions that have eluded mankind for eons.
We at Cerebrus Constipatus are not yet enlightened enough to answer the queries of the ages, though we can help you marvel the genius of the cosmos through our mammoth eye in the sky!
Antennae Galaxies - NGC 4038-4039
Image Courtesy of HubbleSite
With chaos, comes order. The Antennae galaxies which began interacting about 200 to 300 million years ago are one the closest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies. The galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like "arms" extending far out from their cores.
The two orange blobs distinctive in the image are the cores of the original galaxies, and comprise mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appears brown in the image. The galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink.
The image is a trailer of what is to come when our own Milkyway collides with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy in several billion years.
