Space is incredibly big, so collisions are are. But galaxies are super big too, and when two of them get close to each other they start to interact with one another. This is what will happen with us and Andromeda in a few billion years, and you can see recent examples of interacting galaxies with my photos of Markarian’s Eyes or The Whirlpool Galaxy M51.
Even though they appear to be connected (hence their name the “Siamese Twins”) there still is a bit of distance between the two spiral galaxies.
As with most of my targets in the past few weeks, these galaxies lie within the very large Virgo Cluster.
Capture & processing details
Frames: 70×120″
Integration: 2.3 hours
Avg. Moon age: 0.35 days
Avg. Moon phase: 0.14%
Astrometry.net job: 3453325
RA center: 12h 36′ 32″
DEC center: +11° 10′ 26″
Pixel scale: 0.716 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: 203.915 degrees
Field radius: 0.491 degrees
Full capture details on Astrobin
