Only a short distance from the much more regularly imaged Sombrero Galaxy you will find these two wonderful spiral galaxies in the early stages of interaction. Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427
are known collectively as Arp 271. This interacting pair of similarly sized spiral galaxies spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo.
Both galaxies are quite small at around 2.5' each in size and unlike for my last imaging sessions, the seeing was only fair to middling this time around, both nights..but meah.. hey, made the most of it
only had to discard two frames across the two nights though
Arp 271 (100% resolution crop)
Comparison with the 8m Gemini telescope
All details are under the image
You can read more about these beautiful interacting galaxies
HERE
Mike
For some reason they remind me of Dame Edna's Glasses