Hubble and strife
By Faith Smith
I have a confession to make - I'm a soap opera addict. But I have decided to quit - for a story of star-crossed lovers.
Despite the far-fetched story lines and lack of talented actors, my life used to depend on keeping up-to-date with the latest plot line of Neighbours. I just couldn't help but be gripped by the scandal and drama soap operas had to offer.
But after a while Eastenders and all the other soaps became a bit repetitive - even the murder plots became a little mundane and affairs no longer shocked me.
Fortunately, I have just stumbled across an out-of-this-world drama to replace the gaping hole in my life where soap operas used to reside - a drama far more intense, passionate and full of fiery relationships than has ever before been seen on television.
The Hubble Space Telescope is currently picking up incredibly sharp images of the Antennae galaxies colliding 63 million light years away. As the two galaxies square off they are forming billions of stars as they crush and rip each other apart, causing a celestial firework display of incredible magnitude.
During the galactic encounter the juvenile stars mostly huddle in spectacularly luminous groups called super star clusters. The orange cores of the original galaxies are slowly edging closer towards each other, giving birth to a myriad stars via the compression of molecular material in bright blue star-forming regions.
Although the colourful cosmic drama begun about 500 million years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope is only just managing to sift through the galactic wreckage to produce clear images of the nearest and youngest example of a pair of colliding galaxies.
The remarkable image is allowing astronomers to observe the fate of the newly formed super star clusters. It is believed that the most massive will go on to form regular globular clusters like those found in our own Milky Way galaxy, while most will be made redundant and disperse into the background.
The collision of these two galaxies is a beautiful and colourful explosion of cosmic life which we all should be watching closely. And not only because the images are conjuring up a plot more gripping and dramatic than any soap opera, but because it is one storyline in which we will be involved in approximately six billion years when our own Milky Way collides with the neighbouring Andromeda Galaxy. I wonder if Harold will still be in Neighbours by then.
You can view the image of the two galaxies here.
Despite the far-fetched story lines and lack of talented actors, my life used to depend on keeping up-to-date with the latest plot line of Neighbours. I just couldn't help but be gripped by the scandal and drama soap operas had to offer.
But after a while Eastenders and all the other soaps became a bit repetitive - even the murder plots became a little mundane and affairs no longer shocked me.
Fortunately, I have just stumbled across an out-of-this-world drama to replace the gaping hole in my life where soap operas used to reside - a drama far more intense, passionate and full of fiery relationships than has ever before been seen on television.
The Hubble Space Telescope is currently picking up incredibly sharp images of the Antennae galaxies colliding 63 million light years away. As the two galaxies square off they are forming billions of stars as they crush and rip each other apart, causing a celestial firework display of incredible magnitude.
During the galactic encounter the juvenile stars mostly huddle in spectacularly luminous groups called super star clusters. The orange cores of the original galaxies are slowly edging closer towards each other, giving birth to a myriad stars via the compression of molecular material in bright blue star-forming regions.
Although the colourful cosmic drama begun about 500 million years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope is only just managing to sift through the galactic wreckage to produce clear images of the nearest and youngest example of a pair of colliding galaxies.
The remarkable image is allowing astronomers to observe the fate of the newly formed super star clusters. It is believed that the most massive will go on to form regular globular clusters like those found in our own Milky Way galaxy, while most will be made redundant and disperse into the background.
The collision of these two galaxies is a beautiful and colourful explosion of cosmic life which we all should be watching closely. And not only because the images are conjuring up a plot more gripping and dramatic than any soap opera, but because it is one storyline in which we will be involved in approximately six billion years when our own Milky Way collides with the neighbouring Andromeda Galaxy. I wonder if Harold will still be in Neighbours by then.
You can view the image of the two galaxies here.
Image: James Long (ESA/Hubble).
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