This pair of galaxies is located in the constellation of Libra at a declination of -11 degrees. They are at slightly different distances and do not appear to be interacting with each other.
At lower right, NGC 5858 is a small magnitude 13.5 elliptical galaxy located 100 million light years away with a diameter of 40,000 light years. It is very oblong instead of being spherical, with an E6 classification, and looks like it could be a lenticular galaxy.
At upper left, NGC 5861 is a much more exciting grand design spiral. It is a magnitude 12.6 Seyfert galaxy located a bit closer, at 85 million light years away. It spans 3 arc-minutes in our apparent view. This corresponds to a diameter of 70,000 light years. From our view perspective, the disk is inclined about 30 degrees from edge-on. The galaxy is classified as an intermediate spiral, with a slight bar at the core.
This grand spiral is not quite as symmetric as most are. A bright blue star cloud is seen at the upper right edge of the disk, along with some local disturbance around it. This could be the remnants of an interacting companion dwarf galaxy. Also, the arms are lit up by bright star clouds, especially in the lower left half of the galaxy disk. A significant amount of star formation is occurring here, which is a nice contrast to some of the older yellow “dead” galaxies that I have imaged lately.
Coincidentally, my friend
@Markus Adamaszek posted the Astrobin debut of these objects last week, seen
here.
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