A collision of two galaxies has produced a recognisable shape on a cosmic scale. The blue glowing circle is an immense ring of starbirth 100,000 light years in diameter (six hundred thousand million million miles!), expanding outwards at 200,000 miles per hour.

When galaxies collide they pass through each other, the stars rarely colliding. But like a rock tossed into a lake the collision has sent a circular ripple of energy into space, plowing gas and dust in front of it. In this gas several billion new stars have been born.

The large galaxy may originally have been a spiral, as suggested by the re-emergence of faint spiral arms connecting the ring to the galaxies yellow centre.

What happened to the intruder galaxy? It could be one of the smaller galaxies to the right but the truth is not known.

Photo Credit: Hubble Space Telescope, Kirk Borne (STScI), NASA, (picture taken 1994)