                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2022 June 10

                           Arp 286: Trio in Virgo
          Image Credit & Copyright: Nicolas Rolland, Telescope.Live

   Explanation: This colorful telescopic field of view features a trio of
   interacting galaxies almost 90 million light-years away, toward the
   constellation Virgo. On the right two spiky, foreground Milky Way stars
   echo the extragalactic hues, a reminder that stars in our own galaxy
   are like those in distant island universes. With sweeping spiral arms
   and obscuring dust lanes, the dominant member of the trio, NGC 5566, is
   enormous, about 150,000 light-years across. Just above it lies smaller,
   bluish NGC 5569. Near center a third galaxy, NGC 5560, is apparently
   stretched and distorted by its interaction with massive NGC 5566. The
   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
   part of the evolution of galaxies.

                      Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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