Starship Asterisk*

While celestial bodies are usually very well named, the immediate impression I had of the 'The Antennae' was that it a very distinct appearance of a pulsating heart with a couple of tails at the end and so would be more aptly named something like Cupid - might be particularly relevant on Valentines Day!

Anyone else see this in the image?

Okay, galaxies are mostly empty space: "...stars in the two galaxies - NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 - don't collide in the course of the ponderous, billion year or so long event." But surely it is possible for some stars to collide. A billion years is a long time.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060630.html

Welcome Aidan! I see a beautiful dance that galaxies do when they combine.
Orin

I was thinking the same thing when I saw the "Antennae"..

Very appropriate for Valentines day.

Definitely possible.. I'd sure like to see that.

Stars do occasionally collide, but it's a very rare occurance. Stars really are comparitively tiny objects on the galactic scale, dwarfed by the spaces between them. In very star-dense regions, such as the hearts of globular clusters, however, stars have been theorized to collide, leading to the appearance of blue straggler stars.