A remarkable telescopic composition in yellow and blue,
this scene features
a trio of interacting galaxies almost 90 million
light-years away, toward the
constellation
Virgo.
On the left, two,
spiky,
foreground Milky Way stars echo the
trio galaxy hues, a reminder that stars in our own
galaxy are like those in the distant
island
universes.
Predominately yellow, with sweeping spiral arms and dust lanes,
NGC 5566, is enormous, about 150,000 light-years across.
Just below it lies small, blue NGC 5569.
Near center, the third galaxy, NGC 5560,
is multicolored and apparently
stretched and distorted by its interaction with NGC 5566.
The galaxy trio is also included in Halton Arp's 1966
Atlas
of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 286.
Of course, such
cosmic interactions are now
appreciated as
a common part of the
evolution of galaxies.
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