Two interacting galaxies shine in the constellation Triangulum in this spectacular image.
Amateur astrophotographer Gregg Ruppel captured this photo of galaxies NGC 672 and IC 1727 from his backyard observatory in Ellisville, Mo. The image was made over roughly 8 hours of total exposure time with an AstroSysteme Austria (ASA) 10N astrograph with an SBIG STL11000 CCD camera equipped with AstroDon color filters.
Galaxies NGC 672 and IC 1727 are spiral galaxies located roughly 18 million light-years from Earth. Separated by approximately 88,000 light-years, recent findings suggest a tidal bridge could exist between the two cosmic neighbors. The fairly bright open cluster, Collinder 21can also be spotted to the lower left of the photo.
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