Daily Telescope: Two galaxies colliding 300 million light-years from Earth

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In this case, Arp 273 is not one but two galaxies located about 300 million light-years from Earth.

The two spiral galaxies are in the process of interacting with one another, and astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope believe the distinct signs of intense star formation in the nucleus of the smaller galaxy were probably triggered by the encounter with the larger one.

Our photo today was not shot by the Hubble Space Telescope, however, but by James Peirce, an amateur astrophotographer and reader of Ars.

(One of the delights of starting this little feature has been realizing how many of our readers are fantastically talented sky photographers).

Peirce shot this with his Celestron EdgeHD 8-inch telescope from his backyard in Utah.

I’ll take it as the universe tossing me a bone ahead of what may well be another long, cold, stormy winter."

The original article contains 278 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 49%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Wild that this from a hobbyist