Intense galaxy smashup

This Hubble image of the Antennae galaxies is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. As the two galaxies smash together, billions of stars are born, mostly in groups and clusters of stars. The brightest and most compact of these are called super star clusters.

Most of these clusters, created in the collision of the two galaxies, will disperse within 10 million years but about 100 of the largest will grow into "globular clusters" -- large groups of stars found in many galaxies, including our own Milky Way.
The Antennae galaxies, 68 million light years from Earth, began to fuse 500 million years ago.
A light year is the distance light waves travel in one year -- about 6 trillion miles.
The image serves as a preview for the Milky Way's likely collision with the nearby Andromeda Galaxy, about 6 billion years from now.


meno:
this is a article that posted on yahoo news at the science section.
and seeing this just made me once realize how small and ordinary we are and how beautiful and profound our universe is.