ARP293 consists of two interacting galaxies with “wind effects”. "Wind effects" is a descriptive term for the appearance of the tidal streams bridging the two galaxies. NGC6286 is the designation for the edge-on spiral galaxy appearing on the upper left of this pairing. The past interaction with it’s neighbor NGC6285 (lower right) has strung a huge stream of stars across the intergalactic space. The angled dust lane is an indication that one of the spiral arms is bent out of shape. This is likely the source for the stream of stars bending up and away and then looping down through to NGC6285. These faint structures, along with some streamers hanging off to the right, are just barely discernable here. I’ve included Revision C as an inverted and stretched monochrome to show that I was able to pick this up, but not display it properly without pulling up too much background noise. I may work more on trying to layer it in.

There are some theories that NGC6286 may end up as a polar ring galaxy, as with time the loop of stars may settle into an orbit around the core with an axis perpendicular to the main spiral. These interactions are fascinating and dynamically complex systems.

About the technical aspects of my image…

Since the move to a bigger imaging chip, I’m really struggling with off-axis optical aberrations on my system. The star shapes in the corners and perimeter of the image are woefully inconsistent and I have spent countless imaging hours trying to diagnose it. This object was what I was shooting all this time, so it is a conglomeration of many poor frames, and may decent ones. I spent too much time fixing problems in post, but the final image (especially the center of the frame) turned out pretty decent.

Rev A - The full field of view - 50% resolution

Rev B - Cropped center of field view - 75% resolution

Rev C - Inverted monochrome stretched image to show the tidal streams