The Eyes Galaxies are two galaxies, NGC 4435 (top) and NGC 4438, about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo at a declination of +13 degrees. The galaxies are part of the famous
Markarian Chain in the central core of the Virgo Cluster. They are located just east (less than half a degree) of the large elliptical M86.
Because both of these galaxies have a bright oval central region, aligned in the same direction, they were nicknamed the Eyes Galaxies by the 19th-century astronomer L. S. Copeland.
NGC 4435 is a magnitude 10.8 barred lenticular galaxy with a diameter of only 30,000 light years. This galaxy shows little distortion.
NGC 4438 is a magnitude 10.2 highly distorted spiral galaxy with a diameter of 130,000 light years. The blue disk is severely warped with fantastic star streams. The brown central dust lanes reflect the significant distortions that this galaxy has seen. An interesting meandering black dust lane is seen above and right of the galaxy. I believe that this dust lane is a foreground obscuring object in our galaxy but I have not been able to confirm this.
Are these 2 galaxies interacting, or have they in the past? Some simulations indicate that is possible, despite the lack of distortion of NGC 4435. I believe that most of the interaction we see here is caused by the adjacent huge elliptical M86, simply because of the masses involved and the lack of distortion in the much smaller (by 4x) NGC 4435.
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