The Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038 & NGC 4039)

The Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038 & NGC 4039) are a pair of merging galaxies. The two spiral galaxies started to interact a few hundred million years ago, making the Antennae galaxies one of the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies. Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. (NASA, nasa.gov)

Image processed by Andrew Macica, original data from Telescope Live.

Imaging Details:

Observatory: Rio Hurtado Valley, Chile

Telescope: Planewave CDK24

Aperture: 610 mm (24 inches), f/6.5

Focal Length: 3962 mm

Camera: FLI PL 9000 CCD

Filters: LRGB

Total Exposure: 8 hours 0 min.

Image Processing: PixInsight 1.8.9-3 Ripley (x64)

Adobe Photoshop 25.12.1

Adobe Lightroom Classic 14.2

Instruction on PixInsight from Adam Block Studios.