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It's the most wonderful time of the year on Earth - but it seems the universe, too, knows how to throw a good festive party.

A stunning image released by Nasa has shown a kaleidoscope of colour as two colliding galaxies put on a spectacular light show.

But while impressive to look at, the image also has scientific value - revealing a large number of super-bright sources of X-rays that may indicate a new type of black hole.

Scientists in Massachusetts and Texas have revealed a spectacular light show taking place in two colliding galaxies (shown). The galaxies in question are NGC 2207 and IC 2163, which are 130 million light-years from Earth in Canis Major

The two galaxies in the image, NGC 2207 and IC 2163, are located about 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Canis Major, and together measure 180,000 light-years across.

The image is a combination of data from three telescopes: the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

It was compiled by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge and the Harvard Medical School in Boston (all in Massachusetts), and the Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.

Chandra is used to spot X-rays coming from the galaxy, which appear pink in the image.

The reason there is so much pink is that the galaxies contain one of the most numerous collections ever found of so-called ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs).

Both galaxies, like our own Milky Way, contain a number of star systems called X-ray binaries.

These consist of a star in a tight orbit around either a neutron star or a small black hole with about the mass of our sun - like the one seen in the movie Interstellar.

These systems emit a large amount of X-rays, but ULXs - of which both galaxies have many - are far brighter.

Why they are so much brighter than regular X-ray binaries is not well understood, but it might be caused by a larger than normal black hole - an as yet unconfirmed medium-sized one - orbiting each star.

In total 28 ULXs have been spotted in the two galaxies.

The pink colour in the image shows X-ray emissions from superbright sources (shown up close), believed to be stars around black holes. Intense regions of star formation are also revealed in the image, which uses data from three telescope

The image is a combination of data from three telescopes: the Chandra X-ray Observatory (illustration shown), the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope

Elsewhere in the image, Hubble's optical data appears in blue, white, orange and brown, while infrared data from Spitzer appears red.

From the data, scientists have found a strong correlation between the number of X-ray sources and the rate at which stars are forming in any given region.

In the spiral arms of the galaxies, for example, comparatively large amounts of stars are forming in similar regions to the ULXs.

The correlation suggests the stars in the binary systems with black holes are young and massive, emitting huge amounts of radiation.

In fact, such is the rate of star formation that 24 are predicted to be born each year.

For comparison, our Milky Way spawns only about one to three new stars every year.

Elsewhere in the image, Hubble's optical data appears in blue, white, orange and brown, while infrared data from Spitzer appears red. Shown is a previous image Hubble took of the colliding galaxies, with their positions mirrored