| U. S. Mail: |
Richard Ignace Department of Physics, Astronomy, and Geology East Tennessee State University Johnson City, TN 37614 |
|---|---|
| Internet: |
ignace at etsudotedu |
| Office: |
274 Brown Hall |
| Office phone: fax: |
(423) 439-6904 (423) 439-6905 |
The credit to this picture belongs to B. Whitmore of STScI and NASA. It was taken from the `Sky and Telescope' website. The left picture shows a pair of interacting galaxies called the Antennae. On right is a HST image at the heart of the galactic cannibalism, revealing hundreds of young star clusters. The stars in these clusters are believed to be young owing to their bluish colors which are associated with hot massive stars. Unlike the Sun which may have a total lifetime of billions of years, very hot massive stars have much shorter life spans, of only millions of years. But millions of years is a relatively short time on the scale of galaxy evolution, so the presence of many clusters of hot stars suggests very recent activity in these colliding galaxies.
I will make this short. This page has been designed for three reasons: personal ease, professional courtesy, and information dissemination.