Colliding galaxies, Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image. The bright background galactic nucleus (NGC 1275) has a faint spiral structure. The dust lanes (black) and young blue stars in the foreground are part of an edge-on spiral galaxy colliding with NGC 1275. Colliding gas and dust clouds (nebulae), and dust and gas attracted to the centre of the foreground galaxy, give rise to both strong X-ray and radio emissions from this region, and also new star formation. NGC 1275 lies about 235 million light years away in the constellation of Perseus. The image data was acquired by the HST's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in 1995 and 2001.