NGC 2292 and NGC 2293

This is a Hubble Space Telescope snapshot of the early stages of a collision between two galaxies that resembles a Halloween carved pumpkin. The "pumpkin's" glowing “eyes” are the bright, star-filled cores of each galaxy that contain supermassive black holes. An arm of newly forming stars give the imaginary pumpkin a wry smirk. The two galaxies, cataloged as NGC 2292 and NGC 2293, are located about 120 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major.

About the colours

These images are a composite of separate exposures acquired by the ACS/WFC instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope along with ground-based observations from the Pan-STARRS program. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Luminosity: F606W Blue: Pan-STARRS (g) Red: Pan-STARRS (z) The higher resolution, black & white Hubble image and the lower resolution, color Pan-STARRS images were combined using a technique that takes luminosity (brightness) information from the black and white ACS image and color information from the composite Pan-STARRS image. This preserves all of the higher-resolution detail from the Hubble data while also rendering a color image of this region of space.

About the data

The HST observations include those from programs 15445 (W. Keel)