The Antennae Galaxies, also known as the Ringtail Galaxy or Arp 244, are a pair of colliding galaxies located in the Corvus constellation. They are located at a distance of around 45 million light-years from Earth.

Visible toward the top right, NGC 4038 used to be a normal spiral galaxy, minding its own business, until NGC 4039, to its lower left, crashed into it.

As gravity restructures each galaxy, clouds of gas slam into each other, bright blue knots of stars form, massive stars form and explode, and brown filaments of dust are strewn about.

Eventually the two galaxies will converge into one larger spiral galaxy. Such collisions are not unusual, and even our own Milky Way Galaxy has undergone several in the past and is predicted to collide with our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years.

Location: Hubble Space Telescope
Data Source: Hubble Legacy Archive