NGC 5426 and 5427, in Virgo, in a loving embrace. We can see a double star-bridge between the two galaxies, and lots of star formation being triggered in the spiral arms.
North is on the left. The original
uncropped image is 37 min arc across and 0.55"/pixel. The thumbnail is a tight crop 9 min arc across.
The larger, more face-on galaxy (2427), left hand side of the image, is about 2.5 min arc across, Mag 11.4, surface brightness 13.
We've tried to use a very light touch with sharpening and contrast, and not go
too berzerk with the saturation, but we wanted to bring out the difference in colour of the cores and spiral arms, and colour in the gazillions of background galaxies showing form in the uncropped image.
Luminance 13 hours, RGB 4 hours per channel in 30 min subs. Total exposure 25 hours.
Aspen CG16M on 20" PlaneWave. Processing using GoodLook 64.
Edit: Added additional thumbnails with two levels of wavelet sharpening
Hope you like it too.
Mike and Trish