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Capture the cosmos > Galaxies > Dig deeper (cont'd) > Fast Facts: Antennae galaxies
| Name | NGC 4038 and 4039, also known as the Antennae galaxies. The long tails of luminous matter formed by the encounter resemble an insect's antennae. |
| Description | A pair of interacting spiral galaxies |
| Location | Found in the constellation Corvus in the Southern Hemisphere |
| Distance from Earth |
63 million light-years |
| Size | The distance between the centers of the galaxies (the orange areas in the Hubble image) is 30,000 light-years. The distance from tail to tail in the ground-based image is 350,000 light-years. |
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A ground-based view of NGC 4038/4039 (left)
displays their distinctive "antennae." The Hubble Space Telescope
image (right) shows more than 1,000 brilliant star clusters at the heart
of the collision.
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Capture the cosmos > Galaxies > Dig deeper (cont'd) > Fast Facts: Antennae galaxies