Beautiful Disruption

This Hubble Space Telescope view of NGC 7714 shows the aftermath of a galactic fender-bender. The spiral galaxy side-swiped another (which is out of view), pulling out great streamers of stars (the yellow-orange swirls) and triggering the birth of millions of new stars, which form bright blue strands. Many of the newly born stars are much more massive than the Sun, so they quickly lose much of their material through strong winds. The galaxy is about 100 million light-years away. [ESA/NASA/A. Gal-Yam (Weizmann Institute of Science]