Galactic Easter Egg

With colors that would make Faberge green with envy, the Cartwheel galaxy stands out against a backdrop of other brightly colored galactic bodies. The Easter egg appearance of this galaxy is due to false colors representing various wavelengths of light ultraviolet in blue, B band visible light in green, infrared in red and x ray radiation in purple. The rings of this galaxy are the aftermath of a collision between the Cartwheel galaxy and another galaxy about 100 million years ago. The first ripple is the blue outer ring, while the yellow orange yolk of the Easter egg is a combination of visible and infrared light from the second ripple. The neon blob and green spiral in the background are two other galaxies, one of which may have been the one that collided with Cartwheel