This is an image of a well-known and remarkable presentation of three galaxies in close angular proximity. The centers of the two outer galaxies are separated by less than a quarter of a degree, which is approximately half the angular size of the full moon. Located in the constellation Draco and known as the Draco Trio, it can be viewed through moderate-sized amateur telescopes and offers a comparative view of a face-on spiral galaxy, an elliptical galaxy, and an edge-on spiral galaxy.

From left to right in this image, the galaxies are catalogued as NGC5985, NGC5982, NGC5981.

NGC5985: distance 140.41 ± 35.18 million light years (Wikipedia). This face-on spiral is classified as a Seyfert galaxy, which is a galaxy with an active nucleus - a compact central region that has a higher than normal luminosity over portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Such galaxies typically have a supermassive black hole at the center surrounded by an accretion disk of matter being pulled into the black hole.

NGC5982: distance 123 ± 34 million light years (Wikipedia). An elliptical galaxy of about 100,000 light years in diameter. Elliptical galaxies are typically composed of older stars, with little new star formation. The galaxy has a supermassive black hole in the center with a mass estimated to be 830 million times that of our Sun. The galaxy also exhibits shells in the halo, which are partially resolved in the image. Some 10% of elliptical galaxies exhibit such shells, and it is thought that these result from gravitational ripples resulting from a merger with another (smaller) elliptical galaxy. NGC5982 may have as many as 26 shells.

NGC5981: distance estimate 160 million light years (simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-ref?bibcode=2016AJ....152...., edge-on spiral.

The galaxies do not form an actual gravitationally bound group. The image shows many foreground stars (all in our Milky Way Galaxy) and a few more distant background galaxies.