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A color image of three widely separated galaxies. The galaxy at the upper left is an edge-on spiral, seen as a thin rectangular shape with a light brown dust lane going through the middle. A translucent, curved plume, about two times the length of the galaxy trails off to the left. The galaxy at lower left is a face-on barred spiral galaxy, with a bright central bar and two spiral arms, which form an S-shape. The galaxy at lower right is a nearly face-on spiral, with a bright nucleus and curving dust lanes. The image is very dense with foreground stars. A scale bar marking 50 kpc takes up about 1/6 of the width of the image.

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A color image of three widely separated galaxies. The galaxy at the upper left is an edge-on spiral, seen as a thin rectangular shape with a light brown dust lane going through the middle. A translucent, curved plume, about two times the length of the galaxy trails off to the left. The galaxy at lower left is a face-on barred spiral galaxy, with a bright central bar and two spiral arms, which form an S-shape. The galaxy at lower right is a nearly face-on spiral, with a bright nucleus and curving dust lanes. The image is very dense with foreground stars. A scale bar marking 50 kpc takes up about 1/6 of the width of the image.
https://cdn.masto.host/astrodonsocial/media_attachments/files/111/914/920/821/736/508/original/dc832ecaab1effc7.png

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Kelly Lepo (kellylepo@astrodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Feb-2024 22:36:59 UTC Kelly Lepo
in reply to

NGC 3628, the galaxy in the upper left, likely had an encounter with NGC 3627 (M66) a few hundred million years ago, creating a dramatic tail-like plume.
Gravitational interactions between the three galaxies in the Leo triplet may also be responsible for NGC 3627’s distorted shape and prominent spiral arms.
📷 Fig. 1 from:
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022A%26A...658A..25W/abstract
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