ARP 273 is a pair of interacting galaxies located in the constellation Andromeda.
The two galaxies involved in this interaction are spiral galaxies, and they are engaged in a gravitational dance that has distorted their shapes. The interaction has led to the formation of long tidal tails, which are extended streams of stars and gas that have been pulled away from the galaxies due to gravitational forces.
NGC 6393, the larger of the two galaxies in ARP 273, is classified as a barred spiral galaxy, while NGC 6399, the smaller companion, is an irregular galaxy. The interaction between these galaxies is a beautiful example of the dynamic processes that can occur in the universe when galaxies come into close proximity. It is thought that the smaller galaxy may have actually passed through the larger one.
ARP 273 had its 15 minutes of fame when the ESA released a pic of it to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope (show-offs!):
https://esahubble.org/images/heic1107a/Sadly, the effort to capture and process this image was a difficult one. The seeing is bad this time of year, but also the wind is almost relentless. Despite capturing data on this target on most nights for two months, I had to throw away 70% of the frames and still had to deal with strange color fringing on the brightest stars. My best theory at this point is that the differences in FWHM between filters, plus wind that may have affected the scope in different vectors for different filters, were both conspiring to make this target as difficult as possible
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