The Antennae Galaxies, also known as NGC 4038/NGC 4039, are a pair of interacting galaxies in the constellation Corvus. They are currently going through a phase of starburst. They were discovered by William Herschel in 1785.

The Antennae are undergoing a galactic collision. Located in the NGC 4038 group with five other galaxies, these two galaxies are known as the 'Antennae' because the two long tails of stars, gas and dust thrown out of the galaxies as a result of the collision resemble the antennae of an insect. The nuclei of the two galaxies are joining to become one giant galaxy. Most galaxies probably undergo at least one significant collision in their lifetimes. This is likely the future of our Milky Way when it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy.

The above text is taken from Wikipedia.

I have been fortunate to be able to use the remote set-up in Siding Spring - Australia via iTelescope.net. Previously I have taken some luminance images via iTelescope.net and then combined it with color images taken from my home observatory. This is my first fully remote image. iTelescope.net is fairly easy to use and the staff is very professional so I can warmly recommend it should you have the possibility to use their service.

Mouseover of the small thumbnails to the left will show the three different images.

LRGB: Just a plain LRGB combination.

Annonated LRGB: Shows the Ha enhanced image with a grid overlay and known objects marked. It was created in PixInsight using the scripts ImageSolver (a plate solve) AnnonateImage (adding the object names and grids).

The following software has been used. ACP (image acquisition and guiding), CCDStack (calibration and RGB scaling, PixInsight (cropping, background correction, colour corrections) and Photoshop CS5 (all the rest, incl Noel Carbonis Astronomy Tools).

This image was processed in June 2013