Antennae in 60 Seconds

Narrator (Megan Watzke, CXC): This beautiful new image shows two colliding galaxies as seen by NASA's Great Observatories. The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light years from Earth, are shown in this composite image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The collision began more than 100 million years ago and is going on. It has triggered the formation of millions of stars in clouds of dusts and gas in the galaxies. The X-ray image from Chandra shows huge clouds of hot, interstellar gas that have been injected with rich deposits of elements from supernova explosions. This enriched gas, which includes elements such as oxygen, iron, magnesium and silicon, will one day be incorporated into new generations of stars and planets.