The Eyes Galaxies (NGC 4435 and NGC 4438, also known as Arp 120) are a pair of galaxies about 52 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.

While as described above there is evidence to suggest that the environmental damage to the interstellar medium of NGC 4438 may have been caused by an encounter (off-center collision) with NGC 4435, millions of years ago, the discover of several filaments of ionized gas that link NGC 4438 with its large neighbor the galaxy Messier 86 and the discover on the latter of gas and dust that may have been stripped of the former also shows a past interaction between the two systems.

Image data:
LRGB (L=7x20m), RGB 8x20m each, guided 80cm f/7 Astrooptik Keller Hypergraph, FLI Proline 16803, Baader Filters, Prompt 7 CTIO Chile,
Acquisition: Philipp Keller   Processing: Bernd Flach-Wilken