The Antennae Galaxies

The famous Antennae is a pair of spiral galaxies that are interacting and mingling their stars. They began their galactic dance over a few hundred million years ago and are currently in a period where their colliding gas clouds are bursting with new star formation. As the two galaxies merge, their gravitational interactions pull long tails of gas away from each other, and these tails are the sites of starburst activity. This image was processed by Jean-Luc Mairlot and totalises 2 hours in each of the blue, green and red filters. Happy New Year to all !