NGC 5774/5775 Galaxy Pair in Virgo

The galaxy NGC 5775 is a spiral galaxy with a high star formation rate that is in the early stages of a galactic merger with its galactic neighbor NGC 5774, both about 85 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster.

Astronomers have observed bridges of hydrogen gas at radio wavelenghts connecting this edge-on galaxy with the neighbouring face-on spiral (NGC 5774), see here and here.
There even seems to be a visual connection of the two galaxies visible in this very deep image in inverted mode (below).

The smaller spiral galaxy below is IC1070 situated in a distance of 72 million light-years

Image data: LRGB (540-160-160-160 min) total 17 h, north is up, seeing 0.9-1.5 arc-sec,
80cm f/7 Astrooptik Keller cassegrain, FLI PL-16803, Astrodon filters, Prompt 7 CTIO Chile

Processing: Johannes Schedler

Normal image in 30/80% size, inverted image in 30/60% size below.

click for 80% size

click for 60% size

Last modified on Wednesday, 24 August 2016 21:52

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