Favorite Astronomy Pictures.

[Sea of red]

Not enough sound effects of explosions.

It's called Mayall's Object. The galaxy to the right of the screen is what's known as a 'peculiar' galaxy, while a somewhat irregular dwarf one appears to the right. As they draw closer, gravity distributes matter in such a way that it creates odd patterns like the one you see in the picture. However, the shockwave is not a violent explosion, and collisions between the star systems will be extremely rare because their distances are so far apart. The end product will be a ring galaxy in all likely hood, similar to the one below known as 'Hoag's strange object', due to matter accreting outwards away from the nucleus.