NGC 7252 (also known as Arp 226) is a pair of colliding galaxies well on the way to becoming a single galaxy, which displays a complex structure of stellar filaments surrounding the central core, and flung far into intergalactic space (this gives the galaxy an appearance similar to the diagram of an atom used as part of President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program's logo, and led to the galaxy's nickname). Based on a recessional velocity relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation of 4485 km/sec (and H₀ = 70 km/sec/Mpc), NGC 7252 is about 205 to 210 million light-years away, in reasonable agreement with redshift-independent distance estimates of about 185 to 195 million light-years. Given that and its apparent size of about 2.3 by 2.1 arcmin for the central galaxy and its bright surroundings and about 8.5 by 3.2 arcmin for its far-flung extensions (from the images below), the central galaxy is about 140 thousand light-years across, while its extensions span more than 500 thousand light-years.
 NGC 7252 contains over 500 very bright, unusually blue globular clusters, whose hot young stars have Main Sequence lifetimes between 50 and 500 million years. The globular clusters in most galaxies are 12 to 13 billion years old, and contain only relatively faint, cool Main Sequence stars such as the Sun, and still fainter, cooler stars. The young globulars in NGC 7252 must be a by-product of a collision less than a billion years ago which is turning two spiral galaxies into a larger elliptical (although at the moment the core of the galaxy still looks more like a spiral than anything else). The idea that large elliptical galaxies form from such collisions has been around for a while, but galaxies that have had recent collisions have far more globular clusters than would be expected from the combination of the smaller galaxies which formed them. NGC 7252 shows that this anomaly can be explained by the formation of new globulars during the collision.
 In addition to the spectacular view of the galaxy which this large cutout provides, the sky surrounding NGC 7252 is filled with a multitude of faint dots and splotches. Careful examination of the background will show that almost every one of those dots is a more distant galaxy.
 (Image Credit ESO, which see for an even larger image)