Many of the heaviest chemical elements are formed through rapid neutron capture reactions, occurring only in environments with extremely high neutron fluxes. The collisions of neutron star pairs generate highly neutron rich ejecta in which these reactions take place. Such a binary neutron star merger is depicted in this image, as well as its nuclear products.
This image was produced for an upcoming press release on a recent publication exploring modes of mass transfer of heavy-element-enriched material from binary neutron star merger sites in the galactic halo to the star-forming regions in the disk (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022ApJ...939...59A/abstract).
The dynamical and wind ejecta components from the merger were products of fluid simulations in Blender. The atoms are simple models with metallic shaders to evoke imagery of gold, platinum, etc. (metals produced in these events), and all of these elements were composited together in Photoshop.