Antennae Galaxies

Antennae Galaxies — merging galaxies, explore its interactive 3D model in Cosmoscope.

Explore Antennae Galaxies in an interactive 3D view of space. See its catalogue position, distance and astronomical facts.

Two spiral galaxies in the middle of a collision, their discs crashing together while two long tails of stars arc away into space like an insect’s antennae. The squeeze of gas between them is forming new star clusters by the thousand. From home this view matches the Hubble and Legacy Surveys images; the depth is a model.

Type

Two colliding spiral galaxies, NGC 4038 and NGC 4039

Distance

72 million light-years (supernova 2007sr; Schweizer et al. 2008)

Tails

Two long streams of stars flung out by the collision: the “antennae”

Star birth

The collision has set off thousands of young star clusters

Shown here

Hubble’s image of the merging discs and the Legacy Surveys’ image of the tails, Milky Way stars removed

Brightness

The faint tails are shown about 70 times brighter than on the Hubble image’s own scale

Depth

Illustrative: each disc tilted as its catalogued shape implies, its tail following its plane

Image credit

NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble · Legacy Surveys / D. Lang (Perimeter Institute) · CC BY 4.0

Explore Antennae Galaxies in 3D

Antennae Galaxies is placed in three-dimensional space using catalogue coordinates and an adopted astronomical distance. Rotate and zoom to explore the model. Stellar surfaces, gas structure and dust depths may be reconstructed or illustrative, as described in its facts; this is not live imagery from a telescope.