What you see here is an common occurrence between two galaxies. Two galaxies? Isn't there only one in the picture? Well that's what's so interesting about this picture, these are actually two galaxies, colliding.
The only reason why it is not usual when a galaxy collides because there are thousand of light years between each one. Although there is this huge space between them, remember that galaxies move as well as rotate. So after billions of years, there is a chance that they can come and collide with one another. When they do collide, however, the actual stars formed in them do not collide with other stars just because there too is a lot of space separating each star from one another. Also compared to the galaxy as a whole, the stars only take up a very little proportion.... so basically a star 5 times bigger than our sun is just like a grain of sand in the ocean..... Galaxies are huge! The universe is huge!!
Anyways, this collision of two galaxies can take up to a hundred million years in which both systems, due to their intense gravity, will basically rip each other apart, usually with one winner at the end. During this battle of the stars, the dust and gas in each system collide and intertwine forming molecular clouds which are being compressed during the encounters which cause the rapid birth of millions of stars. This also causes many of the new stars to be gravitationally bound near one another making massive star clusters.
These galaxies that you see above are in the constellation Corvus the Crow. The galaxies are NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 and together they are now called Antennae.
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