The central region of the galaxy is home to hundreds of massive, ultra-luminous clusters of young stars that appear as bluish knots of light.
These young clusters were created on the suspected galaxy merger, that pushed gases into these regions and caused a burst of star formation.

The most conspicuous of them is one known as W3, which has a mass of around 8*10⁷ solar masses.
This object, also the most luminous super star cluster known to date, has properties more similar to an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy and differs only from those galaxies because of its age (300–500 million years).

A pinwheel-shaped disk, rotating in a direction opposite to that of the galaxy, is found deep inside NGC 7252: it resembles a face-on spiral galaxy, yet it is only 10,000 light years across.
It is believed that this pinwheel-shaped structure is a remnant of a collision between two galaxies.
Within a few billion years, NGC 7252 will look like an elliptical galaxy with a small inner disk due to the exhaustion of the gases in the galaxy.

In August 2013, F. Schweizer and others published a paper in the Astrophysical Journal titled "The [O III] Nebula of the Merger Remnant NGC 7252: A Likely Faint Ionization Echo".
This reports the finding of a Voorwerpje on the outskirts of the well-studied NGC 7252.
The abstract states (edited): "We present images and spectra of a ~10 kpc-sized emission-line nebulosity discovered in the prototypical merger remnant NGC 7252 and dubbed the `[O III] nebula' because of its dominant [O III]_5007 line.
This nebula seems to yield the first sign of episodic AGN activity still occurring in the remnant, ~220 Myr after the coalescence of two gas-rich galaxies.
Its location and kinematics suggest it belongs to a stream of tidal-tail gas falling back into the remnant."
It continues: "This large discrepancy suggests that the nebula is a faint ionization echo excited by a mildly active nucleus that has declined by ~3 orders of magnitude over the past 20,000–200,000 years.
In many ways this nebula resembles the prototypical `Hanny's Voorwerp' near IC 2497, but its size is 3x smaller."
The central region of the galaxy is home to hundreds of massive, ultra-luminous clusters of young stars that appear as bluish knots of light. These young clusters were created on the suspected galaxy merger, that pushed gases into these regions and caused a burst of star formation.
The most conspicuous of them is one known as W3, which has a mass of around 8*10⁷ solar masses. This object, also the most luminous super star cluster known to date, has properties more similar to an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy and differs only from those galaxies because of its age (300–500 million years).
A pinwheel-shaped disk, rotating in a direction opposite to that of the galaxy, is found deep inside NGC 7252: it resembles a face-on spiral galaxy, yet it is only 10,000 light years across. It is believed that this pinwheel-shaped structure is a remnant of a collision between two galaxies. Within a few billion years, NGC 7252 will look like an elliptical galaxy with a small inner disk due to the exhaustion of the gases in the galaxy.
In August 2013, F. Schweizer and others published a paper in the Astrophysical Journal titled "The [O III] Nebula of the Merger Remnant NGC 7252: A Likely Faint Ionization Echo". This reports the finding of a Voorwerpje on the outskirts of the well-studied NGC 7252. The abstract states (edited): "We present images and spectra of a ~10 kpc-sized emission-line nebulosity discovered in the prototypical merger remnant NGC 7252 and dubbed the `[O III] nebula' because of its dominant [O III]_5007 line. This nebula seems to yield the first sign of episodic AGN activity still occurring in the remnant, ~220 Myr after the coalescence of two gas-rich galaxies. Its location and kinematics suggest it belongs to a stream of tidal-tail gas falling back into the remnant." It continues: "This large discrepancy suggests that the nebula is a faint ionization echo excited by a mildly active nucleus that has declined by ~3 orders of magnitude over the past 20,000–200,000 years. In many ways this nebula resembles the prototypical `Hanny's Voorwerp' near IC 2497, but its size is 3x smaller."
NGC 7252