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. This is the picture you see when two galaxies have a violent collision. This brings the birth of billions of new stars. Most of these clusters will disperse in about ten million years but about a hundred of them will grow into globular clusters. Globular clusters are large groups of stars found in many galaxies, including our own Milky Way. The Antennae galaxies are sixty-eight million light years away from earth, began to fuse five hundred million years ago. This image serves as a preview for the Milky Way's likely collision with nearby Andromeda galaxy,about six billion years from now.
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