Source NASA\/ESA\/Hubble<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThese are the Antennae Galaxies NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 which have collided and are now locked in a deadly embrace.<\/p>\n
Both were originally spiral galaxies, but over the past few hundred million years, they’ve been engaged in a gravitational waltz which has distorted both galaxies and ripped stars into a streaming arc between the two.<\/p>\n
Far-flung stars and streamers of gas stretching out deep into space, (out of frame) create long antennae like tidal tails, which give the galaxies their name.<\/p>\n
The pair are between 45 million and 65 million light years away.<\/p>\n
Written by Stuart Gary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The universe came into existence in a big bang about 13.8 billion years ago, but it took another 300,000 years for the universe to cool down enough for the first atoms of hydrogen and helium to form. Some areas cooled slightly quicker and became slightly denser than others.\u00a0\u00a0 These density fluctuations provided the primordial seeds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":161,"parent":21,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"templates\/sciencearticle.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroquest.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroquest.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroquest.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroquest.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroquest.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/astroquest.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8425,"href":"https:\/\/astroquest.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/160\/revisions\/8425"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroquest.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroquest.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroquest.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}